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Early childhood educators have a lot to teach their young students to equip them for academic success in elementary grades. To support and strengthen that success, children also need a set of wellness skills, which many are now receiving thanks to partnerships that bring 91��Ƭ�� graduate students into Head Start programs around the state.

The partnerships approach wellness in Head Start classrooms from two different angles, one encouraging healthy food choices, the other introducing social-emotional strategies to preschoolers.

Healthy Diets

For several years, graduate students pursuing dietetic master’s degrees at 91��Ƭ�� have fulfilled their internship requirements by visiting Head Start classrooms around the state, including in Pittsfield, Franklin, and Concord. The program is led by Kate Graves, an Extension field specialist who has experience working with the federally funded early childhood education program. She also works closely with Noereem Mena, assistant professor in 91��Ƭ��’s College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, on Farm to Early Childhood initiatives statewide. The program uses a curriculum adapted from a healthy eating intervention program originally designed by the University of Connecticut.

Each 30-minute lesson in the curriculum includes a book, a movement break, and tasting a fruit or vegetable. Rather than dividing foods into “good” and “bad,” which can be confusing for such a young audience, the lessons encourage children to think about how the foods help their bodies.

The program benefits the graduate students as well, even if they intend to use their degrees to help older clients.

“What I have said to students is if you can command a room of 3- to 5-year-olds, you can command a room of adults,” Graves says. “3- to 5-year-olds have their own agenda. They have their own thing going on, and you need to be able to command the room.”

Julie Beliveau ‘26, a dietetic graduate student, enjoyed the challenge of engaging preschoolers, which came as a surprise. “I learned how important it is to expose a young child to fruits and vegetables, and emphasize it in a positive way,” Beliveau says. “We make it really fun — we use puppets, we try a new food, we create a positive and safe food environment for these young children to be okay with trying new things and expanding their palates.”

Healthy Minds

Mental health is now on the menu as well, thanks to a new program that also bears Graves’s fingerprints. The program, “Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies,” sprang from conversations Graves had with her early childhood contacts and then with Kendra Lewis, an Extension state specialist who helped to develop the curriculum.

In 2022, preschool teachers asked for lessons on social-emotional health as well as healthy eating. Lewis came to 91��Ƭ�� from California, where she helped to develop a similar curriculum for older students. She reached out to her former colleagues, and together they applied the principles to preschoolers.

The curriculum is based on research-backed mindfulness, including [KL1.1]how to think about, and talk about, uncomfortable emotions. If students are feeling disappointed, frustrated, sad, it's important to know how to work through those feelings, Lewis says. What things can they do that are safe and let them express those emotions?

“Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies” was piloted last year in California and in Head Start locations in New Hampshire and was initially delivered by trained Extension staff. The lessons are now being taught by volunteers and student interns.

Feedback from the volunteer instructors is helping to fine-tune the curriculum so that it could be used in a range of settings and, according to Lewis, be picked up by any educator.

“My ultimate goal would be to make it accessible for any teacher in New Hampshire,.” she says.