This study ultimately aims to vivify children, rural communities, and the lives. Firstly contents and management of ecological diet program in early childhood center, which provides organic foods and intends to bring up children who have healthy minds...
This study ultimately aims to vivify children, rural communities, and the lives. Firstly contents and management of ecological diet program in early childhood center, which provides organic foods and intends to bring up children who have healthy minds and bodies, are investigated, and then, the changes of children, teachers, and parents according to the management of this program are researched.
The research contents for the purpose of this study are as following.
1. This study investigates the outline, direction, and practice of the ecological diet program in early childhood education center.
2. This study research how children, teachers, and parents are changed according to the management of ecological diet program in early childhood education center.
The conclusions were as following.
1. The aim of the ecological diet program is to provide children with organic foods from a vitality of the lives in the nature, to grow up them who have healthy bodies, minds, and souls, and to help them build up their right eating habits and attitudes. The organizations for this aim consist of three parts: program for children, program for teacher, and program for parents. The directions to manage this program emphasized the relationship with nature and other people through foods, the integration of educational activities and daily life, and parents' spontaneous management. The contents of this program are, firstly for children, providing meals and light meals, a cooking activity, a birthday celebration, cultivating a vegetable garden, and activities using traditional customs of changing seasons, secondly for teachers, in-service teacher training, cultivating a vegetable garden, developing materials for activities, and the interchange between an urban and a rural community for teacher, and lastly for parents, parents training, voluntary service activities, cultivating a vegetable garden and the interchange between an urban and rural community.
2. The management of ecological diet program in early childhood education center brought changes of understanding and attitudes to foods for children, teachers, and parents.
First, for children, their understanding on foods changed to know there are both healthy foods and harmful foods. Also they recognized local and seasonable foods are much better than foods with chemical food additive. Furthermore, they are thankful for all the trouble all the people who make efforts to provide foods for them. On the other hand, attitudes to foods have turned into eating seasonable and traditional foods well, considering foods valuable, and having balanced diets. Their ingestion and kinds of food increased as well.
Next, for teacher, understanding on foods have changed to know that relation among every life, nature and people are in close connection, and right eating habit is important as foods have influence on physical health as well as mental and emotional health. While, attitudes to foods have turned to having a balanced diet with seasonable and traditional foods, that is, foods which have tastes for nature, not fast foods or instant foods. In addition, they have begun to provide children with a variety of opportunities to experience directly for themselves, not knowledge-based guidance, to help children change their eating habits into actual behavior.
Last, for parents, understanding on foods have changed to understand the relationship among foods, nature, and people, and then recognize that a person who have healthy foods also can be healthier as healthy foods are from healthy nature. Whileas, changes of attitudes to foods led to changes of parents' own preference on foods so that their eating habits were changed, they got to prepare natural foods rather than processed foodstuffs or fast foods, reduce food additive when cooking, and check the original home of foods, whether they contains food additive or they are genetically modified food or not, when buying foods.