School Spotlight: Enfield Public Schools’ Healthy Taste Testings

02/20/18

One of the greatest things about the BOKS program is that it can be easily adaptable and customized to a school’s needs. One of the benefits of this flexibility is that as schools use BOKS they often come up with additional creative activities and programs outside of the BOKS curriculum. At BOKS, we like to uncover these gems and share them with the greater BOKS community.

This month, we are highlighting Enfield Public Schools “Healthy Taste Testings” program. Read on to hear more about this creative nutrition program:

To learn more about Healthy Taste Testing, the BOKS marketing team reached out to Jennifer Moncuse. Jennifer works for KITE, the early childhood collaborative that brought BOKS to six of the Enfield Public Schools in Connecticut. She has also served as a BOKS trainer in one of her own children’s schools so she has firsthand knowledge of the benefits of the program.

Jennifer told us that after realizing the benefits of the nutritional education the comes with BOKS Bits – she came up with the idea to pioneer “Healthy Taste Testings” into her BOKS sessions. These taste tests are not just a huge hit with the kids but they provide them the opportunity to try fruits, vegetables, and snacks that they normally wouldn’t!

Jennifer keeps parents in the loop by distributing parental consent forms that outline the specific foods that the kids are tasting. To add an extra element of sustainability, several of the items were locally grown and sourced from farms in the area. The kids look forward to the unique nutritional education, tasting foods like kiwi and blue corn chips and comparing baby carrots to carrots grown on a local farm.

We love to see our dedicated participants and volunteers showing creativity, and implementing programs that not only get kids excited for BOKS, but help them improve their overall health!