Early Years
Early childhood is the best time for children to learn healthy eating and physical activity habits that will help them to live healthy and active lives into the future. Early childhood services (e.g. preschools, long day care and family day care providers) play an important role in raising healthy children.
The Health Promotion Service works with early childhood services to put into practice the Munch & Move program. Through the Munch & Move program early childhood services are supported to create healthy childcare environments for children and to provide a fun, play based program for children aged 0-5 years that teaches them about healthy eating and develops their physical activity skills.
Our team provides support to service directors, educators and cooks to:
• Teach children about healthy food and drink choices,
• Plan and serve healthy and nutritious meals,
• Develop children’s skills and confidence to be physically active,
• Encourage children to turn off screens and be active,
• Support mother’s to continue breastfeeding,
• Work with parents to ensure support children’s health and wellbeing.
We support early childhood services across South Eastern Sydney with one to one support, free local training workshops, helpful resources and advice as needed.
If you are a service director, educator or cook and would like to find out more about the program please contact SESLHD-HPSAdministration@health.nsw.gov.au.
Fact Sheets
Babies and Toddlers
Children and Families
- Learn how to eat healthier and move more as a family whilst also saving time and money: Small steps for families to make healthy normal
- Quick and easy healthy recipes for busy families: Healthy recipes for children and families
Breastfeeding
- Breastfeeding tips for new mothers
- Breastfeeding after breast surgery
- Breast care when your baby has died
- Breastfeeding support while hospitalised or unwell
- Expressing and storing breastmilk
- Supplementary feeds for healthy, term babies
- Preparing formula feeds And sterilising bottles
- Returning to work while breastfeeding
- Use and care of dummies (pacifiers)
- Using nipple shields
- Weaning or suppressing lactation
- Australian Breastfeeding Association website
- Breastfeeding in NSW - Promotion, Protection and Support
Transition to School
The Transition to School webinar (November 2021) was presented by the Health Promotion Service, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District and Sutherland Shire Council. This webinar provides some practical tips to support transitioning to school. It covers topics such as school awareness, classroom skills, emotional regulation and helpful teacher tips. It also covers the importance of packing a healthy lunchbox and what a healthy lunchbox might contain.
Click the video below to start the webinar.
Services that are trained in the Munch & Move program are eligible to receive the full range of resources and individualised support from a member of our team.
Be part of the Munch & Move program by signing up to the online, self-paced eLearning training package.
Completing the e-learning-Munch & Move Professional Development Training will contribute 3 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered PD https://www.healthykids.nsw.gov.au/campaigns-programs/munch-move-program-training/training-information.aspx.
Local Munch & Move training workshops are also available throughout the year on a range of fun and interesting topics to support educators to implement the program. To find out more about our upcoming training workshops or to discuss program training please contact SESLHD-HPS-Administration@health.nsw.gov.au.
Resources for educators:
A range of Munch & Move program resources is available to download here
Training
Healthy menu planning training for cooks and directors is available for all services. To find out more click here or contact SESLHD-HPS-Administration@health.nsw.gov.au.
Resources for cooks
The Caring for Children - Birth to Five Years manual provides practical information for cooks, directors and educators to meet the food and nutrition needs of children aged birth to five years, whilst in care.
The full manual, as well as a range of menu planning tools, tip sheets and checklists is available to download here.
The Make a Healthy Menu resource has been developed as a quick and easy guide to support services to make healthy changes to their menus to ensure they meet the Caring for Children recommendations.
The Cook's Menu Support Webinar (October 2020) is for NSW service cooks directors/nominated supervisors working in early childhood education and care (ECEC) centre-based services across NSW. This two hour webinar provides free training in healthy menu planning and is based on the 'Make a Healthy Menu' resource and 'Caring for Children - Birth to Five Years manual' located above. It covers the following topics:
- Why healthy eating is important
- How to read food labels
- Understanding the Health Star Rating
- The Australian Dietary Guidelines and the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating, including the five food groups, serve sizes for children and discretionary foods
- The ECEC services requirements under The National Quality Framework
- How to prepare breast milk and infant formula
- How to plan a healthy menu and modifying recipes to make them healthier
- How to manage challenges such as food costs, fussy eaters, food intolerances and allergies
- Food safety and hygiene.
Services will need their service menu on hand when completing this training as it will be used throughout the webinar. Once this training is completed, services can send through their service menu and completed record of completion form, as well as any follow up support to: SESLHD-HPS-Administration@health.nsw.gov.au.
Click here for the Record of Completion template.
Click video below to start the training.
Audio