Our Mission
Our mission is to bring early childhood educators and families together to enable lifelong healthy eating habits for each child. This includes not only the encouragement of healthy food consumption, but development of healthy relationships with foods as well. We believe that it takes a village in order to accomplish this goal.
Village Table provides nutrition education through a preschool curriculum for child care centers, food and nutrition focused professional development for early childhood educators, and nutrition information and kid-friendly recipes for parents.
What We Do
Knowing and understanding which foods are healthy and creating opportunities for exposure to those foods are important aspects of creating healthy eating habits in children. Unfortunately, they are not enough. Young children have a limited role in selecting, buying, and preparing the foods they eat. This makes the involvement of parents, teachers, and community crucial to the development of healthy food choice. Village Table works to integrate these groups to help facilitate healthy eating decisions.
Professional Development Courses
- We at Village Table understand the crucial role that early childhood educators play in the development of healthy habits in our children. We aim to equip teachers and administrators with practical nutrition related knowledge that will enable them to help children create these necessary lifelong habits.
- Village Table provides a variety of nutrition-focused Professional Development courses that can help early childhood educators teach nutrition to young children, learn about nutrition for themselves so that they may become healthy role models, learn how nutrition impacts different age groups, and more.
- All courses are developed by properly credentialed authors and can help educators work towards their required training hours.
- Live interactive webinars, on-demand digital trainings, and in-person professional development courses are available.Â
Preschool Curriculum
- The Village Table nutrition education curriculum was designed to meet the developmental needs of pre-kindergarten children.
- Lessons introduce preschoolers to the concept of being healthy and the foods we need to eat to help our bodies grow.
- Through books, circle time cards, hands-on activities, and craft activities; children are frequently exposed to healthy foods. This exposure can increase familiarity to these foods and make it more likely that preschoolers will accept them when served at meals and snacks.
- Time and money are frequent barriers to implementing nutrition education in preschools. Village Table gives schools flexibility in how they access and execute the lessons, minimizing these barriers. Curriculum components can be purchased in complete packages or in stages. A low-cost downloadable version is available as well.
Family Nutrition Blog
- Village Table provides a colorful take home sheet for parents. These sheets let parents know what their child has been learning and offers practical ways they can continue these lessons at home. Village Table also provides book recommendations for home that coincide with the learning objectives and continue education and exposure at home.
- The Village Table website equips parents with research-based, quality nutrition information articles. We also provide healthy, kid-friendly recipes.
- Village Table offers recommendations for products that will help parents in the kitchen, increase exposure to healthy foods, and some that are just plain fun for kids!
Village Table Community
- Village Table works with restaurants to analyze menus and find healthy options for children. If there aren’t any on the menu, we work with chefs to help create them.
- Interested parties can contact us at community@villagetable.com
