Nourishing Little Minds in Early Childhood Education and Care (NLMECEC) equips educators to create positive food environments that support children's lifelong healthy eating behaviours. Aligned with the Early Years Learning Framework, the program enhances children's awareness, interest and enjoyment of nourishing foods while recognising the influential role educators play in shaping positive food experiences.

Expected outcomes for this program include:

• improved understanding of language and role modelling that supports children’s positive relationship with food
• improved awareness of service-wide positive eating culture and healthy food environment
• improved ability to integrate play-based learning activities that enhance children’s awareness, interest and enjoyment of nourishing food and
• improved understanding of food-based experiences that can influence children’s eating behaviour.

This program is delivered as a 2-hour face-to-face educator professional development session by trained Accredited Practising Dietitians. Educators are introduced to the NLM educator manual and take part in a creative element of crafting a suite of resources to use in meaningful learning activities that can be embedded into daily programming.

Participating centres receive a resource kit comprising of:

• 6 children’s story books that portray nutritious foods in positive ways
• a printed copy and online access of the NLM educator manual and
• a range of customisable resources and printed templates that support the creation of additional learning materials and activities.

The story books are intentionally selected to pair visual food exposure with early childhood literacy and reflect a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.

ECEC services that complete the training are offered a 1-hour refresher course within 12 months to support ongoing program implementation and will become a subscriber to Nutrition Australia’s Food Foundations subscription program. The 12-month subscription helps services stay up to date with ECEC best practice in food and nutrition, while gaining access to resources, ongoing professional support and learning opportunities for their team.

This program is delivered for $1,740 per program over a 12-month period. If travel is required, this will be charged based on location: No cost within 50kms of CBD, beyond 50kms of CBD cost by negotiation. Country visits may be bundled with flights, car hire and/or accommodation. All costs listed are GST exclusive.