navigate: home: magazine: spring 2003: article

Penn State publications give preschoolers a head start on learning By Kerry A. Newman
	Thanks to Penn State, educators and parents across Pennsylvania have access to free instructional materials that are designed to enrich child care and preschool education. The Toddler Topics newsletter and the Nutrition in Every Theme activity booklets are two resources faculty and staff from Penn State Cooperative Extension and the colleges of Health and Human Development and Agricultural Sciences have developed to assist parents and educators with early childhood education. While both publications are developed and produced independent of one another, they both possess the common goal of enhancing learning through the improvement of early childhood and preschool curricula. TODDLER TOPICS   Toddler Topics is a newsletter that is produced by Cooperative Extension family living agents. While it was first established by Dr. James E. Van Horn, professor of rural sociology, under the tutelage of Cooperative Extension agents Sandra Parker Hall of Lebanon County and Jane A. Landis of Dauphin County, the newsletter grew from a small regional guide distributed to parents to a centrally produced newsletter with a total of 120,000 issues mailed annually to educators and parents alike. Six issues are produced every year.   “The newsletter focuses on topics like nutrition, health, safety and literacy,” Landis said. “We do an evaluation and gather topic areas from our audience.”   Articles may address topics such as parenting techniques, proper hand washing and activities like finger painting. In addition, each issue includes a simple recipe kids can help prepare and recommended books to read.   While program specialists and researchers are sometimes consulted for articles, the stories are otherwise developed and produced by the agents. Landis solicits ideas and edits content, while Hall handles administrative tasks, such as printing, mailing and distribution.   Due to its broad readership, the newsletter impacts all generations, from parents and teachers to grandparents and doctors. In addition to being mailed to daycare centers, preschools and Head Start centers across Pennsylvania, the newsletter is often disseminated at pediatricians’ offices and other public venues.   “We try to make it available anywhere parents may be gathering,” Hall said.   Landis and Hall acknowledged that Toddler Topics has been used as a model for other newsletters and provides positive networking opportunities for Cooperative Extension.   “It’s a good marketing tool for Cooperative Extension,” Hall said.   For more information about their work on Toddler Topics, contact Sandra Hall by phone at 717-270-4391 or by e-mail at sph3@psu.edu or Jane Landis by phone at 717-921-8803 or by e-mail at JMecum@psu.edu. NUTRITION IN EVERY THEME   While Toddler Topics promotes early skill development and the solid parenting of toddlers, the goal of Nutrition in Every Theme is to help toddlers develop healthy eating habits. Developed by Dr. Jill Patterson, assistant professor of nutrition in the College of Health and Human Development, who works in collaboration with Cooperative Extension, Nutrition in Every Theme is a series of activity booklets designed to implement messages about nutrition and healthy eating into the child-care routine. Development of the materials began in 2000 with funding Patterson received from the Dannon Institute.   “I wanted to do more outreach and nutrition communication,” Patterson said. “My idea was to get nutrition into theme-based curricula.”   Following that idea, she said the project goal was to develop a collage of materials that a teacher or daycare provider can pick and choose from and insert into their existing objectives.   “The focus is on establishing a pleasant eating environment, encouraging children to try new foods and learning about healthy food choices,” Patterson said.   As a result, Nutrition in Every Theme booklets have been produced about butterflies, dinosaurs and gingerbread. While each unit is limited to the specific topic area, each booklet focuses on nutrition-specific activities. For instance, in the dinosaur booklet, children learn about plant-eating dinosaurs and the significance of vegetables and fruits in their own diets. Each booklet follows up with a list of storybooks related to the topic, general nutrition tips for parents and teachers and an illustrated recipe easy for children to follow.   After Patterson and her team create the lessons and work to design and print the booklets, they turn the finished materials over to Cooperative Extension agents, who distribute them or use the booklets to plan workshops for daycare and preschool educators in their counties. To date, about 5,000 copies of the booklets have been produced and distributed.   Because development of the guides was part of a larger research project, Patterson had the opportunity to test and measure their effectiveness. In fall 2001, she led a training session for Cooperative Extension agents to develop workshops for child-care providers in their own counties. Extension agents held 18 workshops, reaching 293 child-care providers from across the state.   The materials have been positively received and, according to data from follow-up reports, Patterson said that the booklets are being used, on average, at least once per week.   “We met our objectives, and we got very good reviews,” she said.   She attributes the success of the materials to a combination of good research, practitioner insight and a user-friendly format. Her development team includes project specialists Kathy Gorman and Carol Lebold and Charles Orlofsky, a graphic designer who designed the booklets.   Work is under way to produce two additional versions of Nutrition in Every Theme. Like Toddler Topics, there are potential opportunities for implementing the materials in other Cooperative Extension programs. The Dannon Institute also plans to integrate elements of Nutrition in Every Theme into its educational Web site.   “The more people to use the materials, the better,” Patterson said. “That is the reason why we do these projects.”   Copies of Nutrition in Every Theme can be downloaded at http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/nutrition.html.