When pedagogy reaches the table

25 Jul

The Nourish Approach has grown from years spent close to food, children and the everyday life of early learning. Along the way, I began to see that what happens when food reaches the table is connected to much more than the meal itself.

For many years, my view of early childhood food began at the kitchen bench.

I thought carefully about ingredients, nutrition, menus and recipes. I wanted to make food that was nourishing, appealing and possible for a busy early learning kitchen to produce. Like many chefs, I watched the plates return and tried to understand what they were telling me.

Some meals came back almost untouched. Others disappeared quickly. A dish that children enjoyed one week might receive a completely different response the next.

It was easy to take these moments personally.

Had I chosen the wrong recipe? Was the texture unfamiliar? Did the meal need to be sweeter, softer or simpler? What could I change next time?

Sometimes the food did need adjusting. But over time, I began to notice that the meal was only one part of the story.

Looking beyond the kitchen bench

I became curious about what happened after the food left the kitchen.

How did it arrive in the room? Were children already seated, or was everyone still moving? Could they see and reach the food? Were adults able to sit with them? What happened when a child hesitated? What did we say when food was left untouched?

I began to see that the same meal could be experienced very differently depending on what surrounded it.

In one room, lunch might feel calm and shared. Children had time to arrive, recognise the food and decide where to begin. In another, the room might be noisy, the transition hurried and the adults understandably focused on getting everyone settled and fed.

Neither experience could be explained by the recipe alone.

This was the beginning of a much wider journey for me. I began observing more closely, reading more widely and reflecting on what I was seeing. The Nourish Approach has gradually grown from that process.

It is not the result of one model or one moment of discovery. It has been shaped at kitchen benches and dining tables, in conversations with chefs, educators, leaders and families, and through the questions that kept returning.

What helps a child feel comfortable around food?

What makes genuine choice possible?

How can adults provide good nutrition without turning eating into a task?

And what becomes visible about our image of children when food reaches the table?

Pedagogy does not disappear at lunchtime

In early childhood education, we already think deeply about children’s relationships, environments and opportunities to participate.

We notice how children enter a space. We consider what materials are available and how they are presented. We think about when to offer support, when to wait and how to leave room for children’s own ideas.

Yet when lunch arrives, it can be easy to slip into a different rhythm.

There is food to serve, hands to wash and a group to gather. Adults may begin watching what is chosen, what is avoided and how much is eaten. Familiar phrases can appear almost without thought:

“Have one little taste.”
“Eat this first.”
“You liked it last time.”

These words usually come from care. We want children to be well fed. We want them to experience a variety of foods. We may also be trying to reassure a family, support the chef or make sense of a plate returning untouched.

My own learning has been to pause before treating the bite as the most important part of the meal.

What else might be happening here?

The capable child is still present at the table

Te Whāriki positions children as competent and confident learners and communicators. The Reggio Emilia Approach offers an image of children as resourceful participants with strong potential and rights. Pikler-informed practice draws attention to respectful relationships and children’s active participation in everyday care.

These ideas do not disappear when children sit down to eat.

The child who makes meaningful choices during play is also communicating when they reach for one food and leave another. The child who needs time to observe a new environment may also approach an unfamiliar ingredient cautiously. The child whose “no” is heard in other parts of the day needs to know that their response to food will also be received gently.

This does not leave children to manage the meal alone.

Adults continue to provide the food, the rhythm and the care around eating. Children have room to respond to what has been made available.

Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility in Feeding offers helpful language for this relationship. For toddlers and older children, adults take responsibility for what food is offered, as well as when and where eating happens. Children decide whether to eat and how much.

To me, this sits comfortably beside a familiar early childhood idea: children can make meaningful choices within the dependable care of adults.

Care is present in the smallest moments

Mealtimes are full of small interactions.

An adult notices that an initial serving is more than a child wants and makes it possible to begin with less. A child watches the food before reaching for it. Someone spills the water. A familiar ingredient helps a child orient themselves within an unfamiliar meal. A chef hears that a new dish was barely touched and wonders what happened.

Each moment carries information.

Pikler-informed thinking about care routines has helped me consider the value of pace, attention and reciprocity. A routine is more than a task to complete. It can also be a place where the child learns whether their signals are noticed, whether participation is welcomed and whether the adults around them can be trusted.

Around food, this can be as simple as allowing a child time to look, accepting “no thank you,” or staying warmly connected when very little is eaten.

A successful meal does not always announce itself through an empty plate. Sometimes success looks like a child sitting comfortably with others. Sometimes it is touching a serving spoon, recognising an ingredient or tolerating something unfamiliar nearby.

These moments may seem small. They do not guarantee that a child will later eat a particular food, but they can allow familiarity and trust to develop without pressure.

The environment is part of the meal

Reggio Emilia has also influenced the way I think about the environment. Its educational project explicitly recognises the environment as an educator.

Children begin taking in a mealtime before anyone says a word. They notice the noise, the lighting, where they will sit, how the food is arranged and whether everyone seems hurried or settled.

A table can make participation feel easier. Food may be visible and within reach. Serving utensils may suit small hands. There may be enough time for children and adults to settle together.

At other times, the space may be doing less to help. The room is busy, the transition has been quick or adults are moving around because there is nowhere for them to sit.

This is not about creating a perfect dining room. Early learning environments are lively places, and real meals come with noise, spills, interruptions and unpredictable days.

It is simply an invitation to notice.

This idea is also made practical in the Feeding Young Children in Group Settings course developed at the University of Idaho. One of its first practical tasks invites teams to create a vision board for their feeding environment—not only how the space might look, but how mealtimes should feel, sound and unfold. The exercise helps a team develop a shared picture of the experience it wants to create before focusing on individual children’s eating or behaviour.

This matters because the environment is not simply the backdrop to the meal. It is something a team can observe, discuss and intentionally shape.

Sometimes moving a serving bowl, slowing the transition or making room for an adult at the table can offer more support than another instruction.

When the environment is doing more of the work, everyone often needs fewer words.

Curiosity can begin long before tasting

Sensory food education, including the work of SAPERE, has widened my understanding of what food learning can look like.

A child can learn about food by looking, smelling, touching, preparing, comparing and talking. They might notice that a raw carrot snaps while a cooked carrot bends. They might recognise the smell of cinnamon or discover that a tomato contains seeds.

Tasting may be part of this exploration. It does not need to be the price of taking part.

This gives curiosity room to develop without every encounter becoming a quiet attempt to secure a bite. Food exploration can happen in the garden, at the kitchen bench, during play or in a shared conversation. The experience can remain worthwhile even when nothing is eaten.

For a child who is cautious around unfamiliar food, watching from nearby may already be meaningful participation. Research into sensory-based food education suggests that multisensory exploration can support children’s willingness to engage with foods, while repeated taste exposure has the stronger evidence for increasing acceptance. Neither requires adults to turn a shared exploration into a test.

The kitchen belongs in the conversation

As my thinking developed, I kept returning to the kitchen.

The kitchen is where a service’s hopes for nutrition, culture and food learning are translated into real ingredients and real meals. The chef or cook makes daily decisions about flavour, texture, familiarity, variety and presentation.

That knowledge belongs in the wider team.

This does not ask the chef to become an educator or the educator to become a chef. It creates room for both forms of knowledge to meet.

Educators can share what they notice when the food reaches the table. Chefs can explain the thinking behind an ingredient, recipe or presentation. Leaders can create the time and shared language that help those conversations remain curious and useful.

Families add another essential part of the picture. They know the child’s history, preferences, culture and experiences beyond the early learning setting. When families, educators, chefs and leaders can exchange observations without one meal becoming the whole story, the child is surrounded by a steadier message.

The plate tells a story

This meeting place between culinary practice and early childhood pedagogy led me to what I now call the Pedagogy of the Plate.

The plate is more than a container for food. Its arrangement can help a child see what is available, recognise something familiar and understand where they might begin.

A familiar food can sit alongside something less familiar. A small initial serving can feel more manageable, with more available. Where the meal allows it, ingredients can remain visible enough for children to recognise and combine in their own way.

This is not about styling food to impress children or creating an irresistible plate. It is about making the food easier to understand.

Before an adult explains the meal, the plate has already begun telling its story.

Pedagogy and nutrition belong together

There is one more part of this story that matters deeply to me.

A warm, calm and respectful mealtime still needs nourishing food.

Adults and organisations hold responsibility for planning food that supports children’s nourishment across the day and over time. Children do not need to work out how to balance their own nutrition at the table. That thinking belongs upstream—in menu planning, purchasing, recipes, staffing and kitchen systems.

Good nutrition and respectful feeding are not competing ideas.

The food can nourish the child. The way it is offered can respect them. The environment can help them participate.

Nourish has grown from trying to understand how these parts might be held together.

A place to begin tomorrow

I am still learning.

Every group of children, every kitchen and every early learning community brings something different. Nourish is not a promise that every meal will be calm or every child will welcome what is offered. It is a way of looking more closely at what surrounds the eating.

For a busy team, the next step can be very small.

Tomorrow, pause for a moment before the meal begins.

Notice what the child encounters first.

Is it the smell from the kitchen? A familiar bowl? A hurried transition? An adult making space beside them? A plate that lets them see where they might begin?

There may already be more working well than you realise.

And there may be one small change—a little more time, a reachable serving bowl, a gentler response or a conversation with the chef—that makes the next meal feel easier for everyone.

That is where Nourish began for me too: not with all the answers, but with noticing.

Continue exploring: Discover The Nourish Approach

A note about individual feeding needs: This article discusses everyday feeding and food learning for generally healthy children. Persistent eating difficulty, pain, swallowing or chewing concerns, faltering growth, nutritional deficiency, or significant distress needs individual assessment through the child’s family and appropriate health team.