"What's on the menu?" is a burning question on the minds of both parents and students. Child nutrition foodservice professionals are busy planning, preparing and serving nutritious meals that appeal to students and meet the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. In a continuing effort to provide resources for foodservice professionals on the front lines of child nutrition, the Texas Department of Agriculture has created menu calendar templates for school meals. These templates offer a calendar for entering school meal menus and an area for school announcements in The Cafeteria Buzz. The templates provide fun facts to reinforce positive nutrition messages and encourage students to make healthy food choices. (For instance, did you know the grapefruit got its name from the way it grows in clusters - like grapes - on the tree?)
Art on the menu calendar templates is featured in black and white line drawings that will catch children's attention and allow them to color the calendar. The colored calendars are destined to hang in family galleries on refrigerators and bulletin boards.
We hope you enjoy these templates and that they will be useful to you. Please feel free to contact us with your suggestions at mailto:kidsatheart@tda.state.tx.us or (888) TEX-KIDS.
To use the menu calendars in pdf format, simply open the template for the month of your choice, enter the text for your school menus and announcements in the spaces provided and then print. (Helpful hint: The size of the text font will adjust according to how much information you enter. Longer entries will have a smaller font size and shorter entries will have a larger font size. To keep the size consistent between entries, you can reduce the font size by adding blank lines in the spaces you're typing into.) To use the menu calendars in MS Word format, simply open the template for the month of your choice, select "File" then "Save As" and select the location where you would like to save the template as a MS Word document (.doc). Close the downloaded file and open the newly saved MS Word document on your computer. Click on the text boxes and type in desired menu information. (Helpful hint: You may adjust the font size of the text in each text box individually by highlighting the text and selecting the desired new font size in the MS Word dropdown toolbar. This should allow you to resize the menu as needed to fit into the spaces.)
