Story Book and Role Plays: Promising Garden-Based Nutrition Education Tools for Preschoolers

Abstract

Preschool age is the most critical period where nutrition education can be imparted for developing healthy food habits. Garden-Based Nutrition Education (GBNE) is an emerging method to impart nutrition education. Incorporating nutrition education tools like storybook and methods such as role plays can be promising to deliver GBNE. The objective of the study is to develop story book and role plays for preschool children and assess the feasibility and acceptability. Storybook for preschool children was developed considering the easiness of gardening and developing interest in gardening as well as to understand importance of nutrition. A module for role play was developed with fruits and vegetables being characters. Both the tools were developed using standardized procedures and was subjected to pre study. In order to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the developed GBNE tools it was subjected to preschool teachers / anganwadi workers and parents of preschool children. The sample consisted of 75 parents and 75 preschool teachers which were randomly selected from Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram districts of Kerala. The study reveals that, both parents and teacher’s finds role plays as most acceptable and feasible tool to impart Garden-Based Nutrition Education. Since preschool children have abundant energy they enjoy role play, since it is more participatory than listening to stories. Therefore, it can be advocated that story book and role plays can be used as one of the GBNE tool effectively for teaching the significance of fruits and vegetables.