Freebies and Info on Healthy Kids

When it comes to food, I was one of those girls who rarely cooked before marriage and had a LOT to learn. I'm not naturally creative or intuitive in the kitchen, but I'm great at reading, following directions, and love to be inspired! A recent source of inspiration has come from Jamie Boggein's Healthy Kids Virtual Summit!

Visit Healthy Kids Virtual Summit, and you'll see an overview of the 21 experts including the audio of their conversations with Boggein. Many of the experts include free gifts as well! The video dialogues range from 14 minutes to 60 minutes. If you're interested, you can browse to see which ones catch your eye as possibly being the most helpful which is what I did knowing I wouldn't have time to watch/ listen to them all. Here have been my favorites:

• SuperHealthyKids.com
• This is an interview with Amy Roskelly on making mealtime easy. She founded my personal favorite kids' nutrition site, SuperHealthyKids.com. I was using this site so much it became worth it for me to join as a member, and rarely does a day go by that I'm not pulling up a recipe or snack idea I've saved on the site. The primary focus is on making fruits and vegetables simple, fun, and delicious. Get a free 7 day meal plan by going through the Healthy Kids Virtual Summit and  the scrolling to Amy's free gift for healthy kids virtual summit viewers.
• Shazzy Fitness  
• Kristy McCarly founder of Shazzy Fitness talks about hip hop dance as a workout for all ages. She combines modern dance with faith-based contemporary music, including Gospel Hip Hop and Christian Rock. Check out the promo videos on their site, and you'll definitely want to move!
• Adventure to Fitness
• Online educational, fitness videos for kids. Get a free 30 day trial by going through the Healthy Kids Virtual Summit and scrolling to Adventure to Fitness
• Just the Right Byte 
• Jill Castle is a pediatric nutritionist and talks about healthy feeding for Kids in the 21st Century. She is the co-author of "Fearless Feeding: How to Raise Healthy Eaters from High Chiar to High School and her nutrition blog is Just the Right Byte. Get her free gift, "51 Snack Ideas for Kids" by going through Healthy Kids Virtual Summit and finding Jill Castle. I printed this off and let the boys highlight the ones they wanted to try!
• Lalalunchbox.com 
• Gillian Fein created La La Lunchobx, a meal planning app for parents and kids that allows kids to help plan their lunches. The app helps kids learn about balanced meals and also generates a grocery list for parents. It's free during this back to school period, so definitely worth checking out. 
• Handstand Kids Cookbook 
• Introduce kids to international foods in a fun, hands-on way. You'll find cookbook kits and kid friendly placemats for China, Mexico, and Italy. 

Healthy Tidbits From The Vaughan Home

I am NO expert but here are a few things that have been helpful for us!

• Water - We keep water bottles in the fridge at all times so whenever they are thirsty they can grab "cold, fresh" water as we call it! 
• 90/10 Rule - We try to keep the 90/10 rule each day. "Fun foods" in normal portion sizes only make up 10% of our daily intake which would give us 1-2 treats a day. 
• Kitchen is Closed! - If it is not breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack time then the boys know the kitchen is closed and usually reopens every few hours. I started this recently and it really helps prevent  the temptation to graze. 
• Real Nutritional Application - We are always talking about what a food does for you. For example your chicken is protein and what does protein do? Grows muscles! We drink milk for strong bones and teeth. The beef has iron which is going to help your blood and breathing so you can run faster. The fiber in your pasta is going to help you poop!  If you know me that was hard for me to type, but I have four boys so yes they love that one! 
• Portions and Food Groups - I mentioned above how much I love the SuperHealthyKids.com site. They have lots of great free teaching printables, lesson plans, resources, and products for kids. What has been the most helpful in our home is consistent repetition in making sure we get 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day. The goal is to create healthy HABITS, which do not happen overnight! But I can honestly and finally say I have begun to see the fruit of our diligence; everyone is always ready to pick their fruit and vegetable at each meal without thinking twice.

We use these plates from SuperHealthyKids for lunch to practice appropriate portion sizes and keeping half our meals fruits and veggies.

I printed and laminated these charts and initially used them for a couple of weeks to have the boys check off every time they ate a fruit or veggie each day. We celebrated at the end of the week with a special treat if they had eaten their 5 fruits and veggies each day. Every now and then I'll pull these back out if we, including myself, are getting lazy or too hurried and need to get back on track! 

*The printable chart came with my membership when I joined SuperHealthyKids