An Apple a Day

Welcome to week 11 of our Fun Friday giveaways!  (I think it is week 11....) Can you believe that we only have one week left?  It has been a whirlwind of fun and allowed us to meet many new friends!  If you are a new follower, welcome.  We hope you will have fun here and be blessed as well.

Today we have a fun family product I want to tell you about!  I was thrilled to be contacted by Lisa Johnson about sharing her Children's Nutritional Tracker, which is called An Apple a Day.  In the past few years our family has made a conscious effort to improve our health and eating habits.  While we never ate total junk, we did eat a fair amount of processed and boxed "stuff" for ease and simply out of habit.  Thankfully, during the past few years we have been able to make some major changes in our lives in regards to eating.  

One of the things I saw very early on in our process of changing our eating habits was that we truly had no idea what we were putting in our bodies on any given day.  We went from one end of the spectrum to the other.  One child practically no fruits while the other ate nothing but.  One parent ate tons of veggies while the other ate tons of breads and other carbs. (ummm, that would be me...)  If you are a busy family like ours, it is often hard to keep track of what each person is eating.

Here's your answer- An Apple a Day Children's Nutritional Tracker!

Developed by Lisa and her brother, this innovative chart system is a perfect way to track your child's eating for a day.  After slipping an age appropriate Nutrition Card into the holder, you use sliding windows to keep track of the food eaten in each individual food category- fruits, veggies, protein, grains, calcium and treats.  The last window is labeled activity so you can keep track of that as well.  The holder is a sturdy plastic, made to sit  bi-fold on your counter or can be mounted on your fridge with its magnetic back.    Colorful icons make tracking fun and easy, and the sliding windows help with the visually inclined as well as those that need more tactile experience to learn.  Each day you start with all of the windows open and then your child slides and clicks them shut when they eat something from one of the categories.  With a quick glance, you or your child's caregiver will be able to see what your child has eaten and where you need to catch up for the day. 

A core card is included with your Nutrition Tracker that further explains serving sizes and nutritional information and can be inserted in the bottom portion on the tracker.  If you have two children you want to track you can simply slide the second child's card in the bottom instead.  Another cool thing that is available is a responsibility card that can be used to track chores and such for a child and comes for ages 2-5 years old or 6-10 year olds.  Since nutrition needs can vary for ages, the tracker comes with a 2 cards for 2-9 year olds,  but additional cards can be bought for children ages 9-13.

Lisa was generous in sending us both levels of cards so we could track our two boys at one time, ages 6 and 11.  We found our stainless steel fridge would not support the magnets on the Children's Nutritional Tracker so we set it on our counter for ease.  From afar, it looks like a pretty little laptop! ;)  Maybe that's why the 6 year old loved using it!  Actually, what happened was the 6 year old thought it was pretty cool when he was doing it himself, but found it really cool when he realized the bottom tracker was his brother's.  Let's face it, a little friendly competition can sometimes be a good thing!  After each meal he took great delight in racing to see who had eaten "the best"!  

Here is another thing I discovered...my boys had a lot less knowledge on the food groups than I thought they did.  Maybe that is a homeschooled thing, but we have not really talked about food groups that much now that I think about it.  The Nutrition cards along with the core card helped us to teach the boys exactly what a protein and grain where and what a serving size looked like.  On the back of the core card are some healthy snack ideas.  

My bottom line-  This is a fun product.  While my oldest son lost interest quickly, probably because he could never get in enough fruits and veggies, go figure, my 1st grader loves this and is still enjoying it.  It is easy to use and not only a great teacher but also a great motivator for healthy eating habits!


Details-
The product comes packaged for 2-8 year olds and one tracker can track the daily nutrition for 2 children.
Menu cards for children ages 9 to 13 years old are available and sold separately.
Plus it folds easily to travel wherever your child takes you.
Sturdy plastic case will hold up to little hands.

An Apple A Day Children's Nutritional Tracker can be ordered for $29.99.  Additional cards can be added for $5.95.

Lisa has generously offered to give An Apple a Day Children's Nutritional Tracker to one of our readers! Enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway