My name is Tina Chilton and I have been the full time Food Handler of Milestones Children’s Centre for the past 18 years. My role has grown from Food Handler into Kitchen Administrator over the past few years as our Centre has grown. I am very passionate about food literacy and sharing my knowledge and skills with everyone but especially the children in our care. I believe by doing this I can leave an impression that could last into their adulthood. I am honoured that I could have this kind of impact on their lives. Before I get into how I have created a sense of belonging and community with food literacy, let me tell you a little about our organization.

Milestones Children’s Centre is a not for profit organization with a Centre in St. Thomas, a Centre in Assumption Catholic School in Aylmer and we operate before and after school age program in 5 schools within St. Thomas and Port Stanley. We are governed by a volunteer board of directors and we have a full complement of Managers and Administrators as well as an Executive Director.

Our St. Thomas location is licensed for 103 children from birth to preschool age.

Our before and after school age program is licensed for 217 school age children.

We have one kitchen with 1 kitchen Administrator and 1 food handler for our St. Thomas location and School Age programs.

Our Aylmer location is licensed for 49 children from birth to preschool age and have their own kitchen with 1 food handler.

As you can see from above, I am a very busy part of the team here and I couldn’t have achieved what I have without the support of my supervisors and everyone else in the organization. None of the things I am about to explain has happened all at once. It takes patience and baby steps if you will, but it will be so worth the effort. Taking all the workshops I could about food literacy was crucial in giving me the knowledge so I could speak and provide support to our educators and parents. One of the workshops that I took was Janet Nezon’s Rainbow Plate workshop. It was so informative and gave me so many ideas that I could use to do what I do. My Centre was able to purchase her Rainbow Food Explorers Educator Toolkit, which has loads of information for the educators to take into their classroom as well as a wealth of information that can be used for food literacy information sharing. What a great resource it has been!

I have a wonderful person in my life that sews me amazing aprons to wear that draw the children’s interest. I use this interest to give the children a few minutes to speak with me about the aprons I am wearing. Some of them have characters on them and some are just fun patterns and seasonal materials. I think this helps the children to be more familiar with me as well as saying hello to them in the halls when I see them.

I learned from a workshop that children who have a say in what they are eating or what is being prepared are more likely to try the food. With this thought in mind I created my “Lettuce” Pick Your Produce Board. I have a whiteboard that hangs at the children’s level with markers and every other day I put 2 pictures of fruit or vegetables for the children to vote on. I put it out in the afternoon for the next day’s lunch to give parents and children time to do it. I love to see the children’s “marks” for their vote. Some are little lines and some are scribbles and some are large circular marks. It is so inspiring to hear how excited the children get when they have this opportunity. It also lends nicely for conversations to happen in the classrooms with the educators or with families at home. On the other days I post one of the five senses and one picture of a food we will be eating the next day. I pose a few questions based on the sense we are featuring. This past month has been all about sight. I posted a picture of a piece of bread and asked questions like “Do you see the little holes in the bread?” “What could they be from?” “Does the bread look soft or hard?” The children run to the board on their way by it so excited to be able to participate in this activity. It has been so amazing to see the excitement and to hear the wonderful conversations that happen.

I also wanted to share Food Literacy information with the educators and adults that come by as well. To be honest I never put those two words together before for what I do. Food Literacy. I have a large bulletin board at eye level of the adults and here I have been posting how important it is to teach these things to our young children. What they learn now can be carried into adulthood! How awesome is that!! I get to be a part of it, amazing me to no end. I have been currently using the 5 senses on this board as well and speaking to why or how this sense is important and what the children can learn from this. I do have plans to move through all the senses and then transition into other food literacy topics like functional competencies, relational competencies and system competencies. In the world of food the options are endless. Recipes could be posted here that the children are loving too!!

I am pretty sure I heard Janet Nezon say a few times in a workshop “Children eat what they like and they like what they know” Let us grab onto this opportunity to increase the children’s knowledge about food and anyone else learning along with them.

Tina Chilton

Kitchen Administrator, Milestones Children's Centre

FOSTERING A SENSE OF BELONGING AND COMMUNITY BETWEEN THE KITCHEN AND THE CHILDCARE CENTRE