Online CACFP Training

CACFP Annual Training for Day Care Homes is a 3 hour comprehensive online course designed to provide annual required training for site and sponsor staff participating in the CACFP.

CACFP Annual Training for Child Care Centers is a 3 hour comprehensive online course designed to provide annual required training for sponsors participating in the CACFP.

Program institutions and facilities receiving federal financial assistance are required to comply with federal civil rights laws to ensure all child nutrition program participants have equal access to all benefits and services. This course will review civil rights regulations, and provide all information necessary to ensure that your program is in compliance with these requirements.

Multicultural Menus: Diversifying Meals in Child Nutrition Programs is a 1-hour training course designed to provide Child Nutrition Program operators with the skills they need to incorporate regionally diverse meals into their program. This training covers important topics including the importance of providing multicultural meals, methods of implementing a taste test, and ways to adapt menus to provide a range of multicultural dishes.

Basic Scratch Cooking Skills for Child Nutrition Programs is a 1-hour training course designed to provide anyone with cooking responsibilities in Child Nutrition Programs with the basic skills they need to begin preparing food. This training covers important topics including the benefits of cooking from scratch, basic knife types and knife cuts, different kinds of cooking methods, and a brief overview of developing standardized recipes and using cycle menus.

This is a 1-hour training course designed to provide child nutrition program operators with the information they need to accommodate participants’ dietary needs as it pertains to fluid milk consumption. This training covers important topics including creditable milk types per age group and meal service, methods for accommodating special dietary requests and disabilities, and allowable fluid milk substitutions.

This course provides a comprehensive understanding of social determinants of health and their impact on health equity for children. It explores the various factors that influence health outcomes, including economic stability, education access and quality, healthcare access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context. The course emphasizes the role of child nutrition programs, the importance of addressing health disparities, and promoting equitable opportunities for children.

This course is designed to provide effective training tips for child nutrition program staff trainers. The course will review the trainer’s role and the necessary competencies, learning styles, and effective training strategies for in-person and virtual training to enhance their training effectiveness and create a conducive learning environment.

This course equips child nutrition program administrators and staff with the knowledge and skills needed to improve workplace culture. A positive workplace culture is crucial for the well-being of employees and the success of the organization. This course covers the definition and importance of workplace culture, plus strategies for improving workplace culture.

This course is designed to provide comprehensive guidance and knowledge on effective strategies and practices for attracting, selecting, and promoting the most qualified individuals within an organization. The course will explore recruitment and promotion processes and ensure the organization can build and retain a talented and diverse workforce.

This lesson provides information about different purchasing options available to CACFP institutions that will not only help minimize the workload and cost of planning and implementing an effective food program but also make sure that the food program is still able to offer high-quality, nutritious foods.

The course will help you understand basic procurement standards and the importance of vendor selection when outsourcing the food program. It will cover identifying and evaluating vendors based on quality, pricing and reliability. Managing the vendor contract to ensure the quality and safety of the food program will also be reviewed.

This lesson is designed for Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) institution staff to provide a review of the process and procedures of the state agency administrative review.

All Child Nutrition program operators must procure all goods and services using the federal procurement regulations. This course will define informal procurement thresholds, and the main steps involved in procuring food. It will offer practical strategies for purchasing, and provide resources to ensure that the meals served to program participants are reimbursable.

This course will give CACFP sponsor monitors an outline of their responsibilities for conducting successful reviews of centers or family day care homes. They will better understand the requirements for reviews and how to assess compliance with USDA regulations. Finally, they will be able to recognize problems that would result in review findings.

Children learn about the world around them by experiencing and exploring their environments. Giving children opportunities to explore and experience their food by touching, tasting, smelling, seeing and hearing it taps into their natural curiosity and uses their preferred mode of learning to teach them about good nutrition from an early age. What they learn about food and nutrition can have lasting effects into adulthood. Let’s spend the next hour learning about the five senses and how to pique that natural curiosity with fun and easy sensory-based food and nutrition education activities!

Spend the next hour with us learning about basic food safety and sanitation principles! We’ll review why food safety is an integral part of your operations, the dangers of foodborne illness, and how to apply these lessons to your day-to-day tasks and activities. This course will also cover motivating employees to follow food safety processes and protocols. Feeding children and adults is a noble profession – don’t let a food safety slip mar the reputation of your program!

This training provides an overview of food allergies, an explanation of regulations for labeling food allergens, and a description of best practices for food allergy plans. Participants will practice finding common allergens on ingredient lists and identify practices that will keep children with food allergies from coming into contact with food that could trigger a reaction.

This training provides an overview of gluten-free diets, including identifying gluten in food and preventing cross-contact. Participants will be able to identify foods that contain gluten, find gluten on food labels and determine strategies to meet the needs of children on gluten-free diets.

This course will examine the growth and development of infants and how to make healthy food choices for infants to support this development. We will review breastfeeding, bottle feeding and introduction to solid foods. Participants will be able to select healthy menus and understand the CACFP meal patterns for infants.

Participants will learn behavioral strategies to motivate children to make healthy choices. Participants will understand how to be good role models for healthy eating and engage children in fun activities that inspire curiosity about food.

Do you wonder how CACFP benefits the participants in your organization? Are you unfamiliar with the goal of CACFP? Are you wondering what CACFP even means? Then this is the course for you! Over the next hour, we will dig into the basics of the Child and Adult Care Food Program and how it supports children and adults each and every day.

Program institutions and facilities receiving federal financial assistance are required to comply with federal civil rights laws to ensure all Child Nutrition participants have equal access to all benefits and services. This course will review Civil Rights regulations, and provide all information necessary to ensure that your program is in compliance with these requirements.

Helping children get the nutrition they need for health and growth is what summer meals are all about. Creating appealing menus can help kids fuel up, have fun, and get the nutrition they need for growth and good health. This course will explore many ways sponsors can plan menus that kids will enjoy such as using local fruits and vegetables, adding variety and color, and making healthy meals fun!

Sponsors participating in the SFSP agree to maintain the storage, preparation, and service of food with proper sanitation and health standards in ordinance with all state and health laws and regulations. Understanding the proper food safety practices is essential to a successful summer meals site to ensure that the food children consume is safe and to reduce the risk of a foodborne outbreak. This course will promote important food safety practices including good personal hygiene, food temperature and storage, and proper cleaning and sanitizing of foods. Help keep kids safe and food fresh during the summer months!

Offering meals for the SFSP is a great way to ensure that children have access to meals in the summer months. But how do sponsors make sure that people are aware of SFSP sites? How do sponsors attract children and parents to summer meal sites? There are many forms of promotion and marketing that can help sponsors gain exposure. This course will discuss different ways to reach children and families by exploring forms of marketing and creative programming to build awareness and increase participation in the SFSP.

The budget is the key to understanding the financial side of the SFSP. The SFSP budget helps sponsors establish goals, make decisions, and understand how program funds are generated and spent. Participants will explore the biggest expenses and sources of revenue in the SFSP and evaluate those against their budget to measure the effectiveness of their program operations. Stay on track and build a successful summer meals program!

SFSP sponsors who administer the SFSP have a strong commitment to the wellbeing of the children in their community. They want to serve meals to not only increase quality but to attract children to summer food sites. However, the purchasing of food, goods, and supplies can sometimes be a challenging process. This course will explore the options for buying meals in the SFSP, procurement methods, and the purchasing of local foods to maximize SFSP operations.

Sponsors must keep full and accurate records so that they can substantiate the number of program meals that they have submitted at each claim for reimbursement. And, that SFSP funds are used only for allowable SFSP costs. This course will discuss recordkeeping requirements for sponsors including meal counts, program costs, monitoring, and training. Participants will learn and appreciate the importance of complete, well organized, and accurate records in the SFSP.

How important is menu planning to a meal program? The menu plan influences every aspect of the meal program – including purchasing and preparing foods, ensuring that your meals are CACFP creditable, providing adequate nutritional value, accounting for dietary restrictions, and satisfying the tastebuds of the children in your care. In this one hour session, participants will learn about standardized recipes, cycle menus and the benefits of using both of these great tools to maximize kitchen efficiency and food budgets.

Are your meals lackluster? Want to increase flavor, decrease plate waste, and increase meal consumption without making a huge impact to your budget? Step into the world of flavor, spices and seasonings! Take a trip through the herb garden and around the seasoning world while learning how to incorporate herbs and spices into your CACFP menus.

Wanting to learn how to optimize your CACFP Snack Menu, inventory, and labor? Through this one hour session, participants will learn how to use pre-planning methods to optimize their labor hours, kitchen space and equipment, and inventory to build a CACFP Snack Menu from semi-scratch cooking methods while being mindful of budget and nutrition.

Explore how to enhance your CACFP meals and decrease food waste by planning and preparing meals that appeal to all 5 senses. In this one hour session, participants will learn how to examine menus and prepare meals that not only taste great, but look, smell, feel and even sound great!

This training is all about the Child and Adult Care Food Program or CACFP. The course covers topics such as what the CACFP program is and what it does, who is eligible to sponsor or offer the CACFP and which children are eligible to participate or receive meals through the program. In addition, the course covers CACFP meal patterns, how to accommodate children with disabilities that affect the diet and recordkeeping requirements that are important for everyone involved with the CACFP to be aware of – even teachers!

Want to serve CACFP Snacks, but you are limited on preparation space? Want to learn what snacks you can serve in a pinch when you are short on staff? In this one hour session, participants will learn how to provide variety in a CACFP menu, while still striving for optimal nutrition with a snack meal that requires little to no preparation.

Did you know that choking is the 4th leading cause of death for children under age 5? Have you ever thought about what might be a choking hazard in your CACFP Menu? In this engaging one hour study, participants will learn common food choking hazards, explore cooking methods to prevent choking hazards, and learn best practice service methods to prevent choking in their child care setting.