Smarty Pants - Teaching Kids About Nutrition & Physical Activity

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Dr. David Katz, ABC Medical Correspondent, and Director and Co-Founder of Yale's Prevention and Research Center. Dr Katz is a phenomenal speaker! He's engaging, funny, poetic; has spearheaded important research on the obesity epidemic; and has created really neat programs to teach kids about nutrition with Nutrition Detectives© and ABC for Fitness© (Activity Bursts in the Classroom).

Nutrition Detectives is an exciting nutrition education program for elementary school children that is "Teaching Kids to Make Healthy Choices." They learn how to read food labels, detect marketing deceptions while simultaneously learning to identify and subsequently choose healthy foods. The program can be incorporated into a school's curriculum. The information in this program is easy to learn and makes a topic that could be mind-bogging, fun!

ABC for Fitness© (Activity Bursts in the Classroom) - Schools have reduced physical activity for children over recent years. This latter trend is largely due to the conversion of physical education time into time devoted to other subjects in preparation for standardized testing. The ABC for Fitness program shows schools how to restructure physical activity into multiple, brief episodes of activity into classrooms throughout the day without taking away valuable time for classroom instruction. The manual provides instruction for teachers to incorporate short bursts of activity at the beginning of each class. ABC for Fitness can ensure that children obtain the level of physical activity that is essential for good health and well being.

What's even better about these programs is that by clicking on the links above, you'll be able to get free access to the materials just by registerering! SWEET! And, even though they're based for implementation in schools, they still contain awesome information that you can incorporate into your own home! So, share it with your child's teacher, or access the information on your own for guaranteed fun and learning with your kids!