Inside the walls of a preschool, she is busy teaching her students; outside the classroom, she assists people with navigating their relationship with food. From her two careers, Hailey Batchelor, preschool teacher and holistic nutrition coach, created Eat the Rainbow, a children’s book aimed to teach kids about the nutritional benefits of various foods.
A Long Beach native, Batchelor graduated with a bachelor’s degree in child development and a master’s degree in early childhood education from Long Beach State. At first, she was unsure of what to study, and was majoring in interior design until she met with a counselor who pointed her in the direction of child development.
“I’ve always loved psychology, which is a really big portion of child development and working with kids. So, I chose that and started taking the classes,” Batchelor said. “I really just became very interested in what I was learning, and I was actually excited again to go to school.”
While studying child development, Batchelor worked for the Child and Family Center’s preschool for two years, later becoming a nanny for one of the moms during the COVID shut down. While working and studying, Batchelor knew she wanted to work in Los Angeles post graduation, leading her to become a preschool teacher at Cassidy Preschool where she’s taught for the last four years.
Aside from being a preschool teacher, Batchelor also works as a health coach and a holistic nutrition coach at a wellness center in Venice Beach called Hume. Chronic illnesses run in Batchelor’s family and during her masters program at Long Beach State she suffered from personal health issues.
In order to ensure she was at her optimal health, she began seeing a holistic doctor and while learning about her own health was inspired to pursue a holistic health career of her own. She waited a year after she finished her master’s program and then joined a six month online program she knew others had done and received her holistic nutrition health coaching certification.
“I wanted to help people find the answers so that they could feel genuinely good in their own bodies,” Batchelor said. “I do one-on-one nutrition coaching, but it’s really about the whole person. So we also look at mental health, emotional health, spiritual health and physical health, and how they’re all interconnected, and how they all play a role in our nutrition.”
While her two careers seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum, in the back of her mind, Batchelor was thinking of a way to connect the two. It wasn’t until she saw a medium a friend recommended to her that the beginnings of Eat the Rainbow came to be.
As a spiritual person, Batchelor had wanted to see a medium for some time. She called the medium recommended to her and during their conversation the medium asked Batchelor if she worked with children, if she worked in health, and, most importantly, if she had ever considered writing a children’s health book.
“After that call, I just felt really inspired. I knew I wanted it to be about nutrition and I wanted it to be for preschoolers, but I didn’t really know how it was going to convey that message,” Batchelor said. “I just started writing down ideas, and then, Eat the Rainbow was one of the first ideas that I came up with.”
Batchelor feels she connects with and knows most about ages zero to five, which is why she wanted to write a book for preschool age children. When she was younger, Batchelor lacked connection to the food she ate, lacking appreciation for and not caring or understanding its benefits.
With Eat the Rainbow, Batchelor hopes to help children build a strong, healthy and loving relationship with food from the very beginning. As a preschool teacher, Batchelor made sure to keep her audience in mind.
While writing Eat the Rainbow she made sure that it rhymed, but also made sense. Each sentence is short and easy to read, with a consistent format to follow: for each color of the rainbow is a food and why it’s good for you.
“Red is really good for our heart or really good for our skin. Yellow is really good for our immune system. I wanted to just break it down in very simple terms for kids,” Batchelor said. “I wanted it to be from the perspective of the sun, because I wanted it to be a character that kids visually enjoyed and was playful and bright and colorful.”
Batchelor’s friend Allie Sassa, an elementary school teacher, did the illustrations for the book and Batchelor’s dad helped with page formatting to meet Amazon size requirements. With their help and Batchelor’s love for health and education comes the final version of Eat the Rainbow.
Currently available only on Amazon for $13, Batchelor hopes to get her book into some local Long Beach book shops. So if you’re looking for a book to start building your child’s relationship with food, pick up Eat the Rainbow and maybe you’ll learn something too.
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