Are you a teacher at a preschool? Teaching preschoolers can be challenging, but will have many rewards that you will be able to take home with you and be proud. At preschool age, children are curious and love to learn new things. Their brains and minds love to learn new things and associate what they are learning into how items in their life work. As you teach preschoolers, many times you will notice the preschooler getting to a stage that they are showing signs of hunger. If your preschool only lasts for a couple hours, supply the students with a simple snack that will help keep them energized while they are there. If you have the preschoolers for several hours, you will want to have a large variety of snacks and make sure you have plenty of snacks to choose from.
The snacks that you chose to give your students need to be healthy and have the needed nutrients a preschooler requires. Preschoolers are active and require snacks that have a good source of protein, fiber and carbohydrates. Do not have snacks that are full of sugar. The sugar will peak the students’ brains and the peak will then crash, leaving the students with no energy and no response to learn the lessons you are teaching. Make sure you talk to each parent before you serve snacks to your students. Find out what food allergies a student may have and what products a parent may not want their child to have.
Vegetables and fruits are a great source for any preschooler to have. You can serve apples with caramel to dip the apples into; celery sticks with peanut butter or cream cheese on them or cereals with low sugar. Have milk or juice for the students to drink also. You may have picky students that don’t like to eat a lot of vegetable items. Have a few selections for your students to choose from. If you need to serve a larger snack to your preschoolers, you could have a selection of different cereals they could choose from, oatmeal or yogurt.
Providing snacks to the preschoolers you teach can cost a large sum of money. To help with the cost of snacks, have each student bring a snack a couple different times during the preschool year. Give the assignments out to the parents. You will need to include any food allergies other students have and a menu they could choose from. The parents will not need to spend a lot of money on the snack they are preparing for the students. Some parents may ask that other parents bring a store bought item and not produce an item at home. This is done for safety reasons. Have the parents find low sugar cereal, oatmeal, milk, juice, produce and peanut butter. As the teacher, you can use each one of these sources for different snacks.
The snacks that you give to the preschoolers do not need to be complicated and take a lot of time. For a preschooler a snack is the best time of the day, besides playing on the playground. Have snacks that will interest them and will give them the nutrients that they need. The more energized you can keep your students, the more focused they will be while you teach the lessons and the more interactive they will become with the activities you have them apart of.
Allow the students to help you prepare the snacks and also clean up the area where you prepared the snacks. This will teach the student how to not only help an adult, but help a fellow student. They will need to use their listening skills and their memory skills in order to help you.