Health Lesson Plans
With childhood obesity becoming an epidemic, it's more important than ever for elementary students to learn healthy habits early on.
By Jennifer Sinsel
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years, increasing from 6.5% to 19.6% among children ages 6-11. Obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure, and are at greater risk for bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems, such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem. In addition, they are also more likely to become overweight adults. With childhood obesity becoming a modern-day epidemic, it’s more important than ever for elementary students to learn healthy habits early on.
There are many ways to incorporate a study of healthy lifestyles into your classroom. While learning about the Food Pyramid, students can record the foods they eat each day for a week. Tell them to record everything – even quick snacks like chips or soft drinks should be written down. At the end of the week, children can divide their daily meals into categories and analyze their choices.
Students can also research the recommended daily allowance of calories, sodium, and sugar for children their age and analyze the contents of their lunch. Prepackaged lunches are a popular choice among students who bring their own lunches to school, but they are often not nearly as healthy as their packaging or commercials suggest. Many of them contain up to 75% of a child’s recommended calories and salt intake for the entire day, and some have nearly three times the recommended daily allowance for sugar! Discussing these issues can serve as a great introduction to a unit on nutrition, advertising techniques, or marketing strategies.
Teachers can also encourage healthy lifestyles by incorporating fitness activities into regular lessons. For example, you could develop a miniature obstacle course in your quad or playground area and ask students to answer science, math, or language arts questions in order to move on to the next obstacle. The course might include tasks such as jumping rope, hula hooping, running around cones, or traversing the monkey bars. The possibilities are endless. Your students will participate in some physical activity, and they’ll enjoy a new twist on academic review. For more health lesson plans, check out the following ideas.
Health Lesson Plans:
In this lesson students learn about diet and nutrition. They make a food pyramid, categorize foods into food groups, and do research on the Internet. They also evaluate the nutritional value of fast foods and candy.
Students gather information about the nutritional content of foods. They learn about vitamins, minerals, and how to have a healthy diet. They display the data they have collected.
Nutrition and the Media: Cereal Box Consumerism
This lesson has students evaluate how the media influences our decisions about what we eat. Students design a cereal box, and discuss how companies get people to buy their products with the use of slogans, prize offers, and other enticements. They also evaluate the nutritional value of foods.