Capacity - Nutrition Education and Physical Activity

Cooking Matters for Chefs and Kids is an easy-to-use guide that helps chefs, nutrition educators, and food service professionals provide hands-on instruction that will help kids develop a love of cooking and the skills to make healthy food choices wherever they go. Within the guide you will find a variety of resources to help you engage kids, including tips and advice for planning fun activities, materials lists and activity instructions, appealing and interactive recipes for kids, and fun handouts that supplement the lessons of each activity.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons can be taught as stand-alone lessons and can be implemented by anyone with culinary training in any community.

Color Me Healthy is a program developed to reach children ages four and five with fun, interactive learning opportunities on physical activity and healthy eating. It is designed to stimulate all of the senses of young children: touch, smell, sight, sound, and, of course, taste. Through the use of color, music, and exploration of the senses, Color Me Healthy teaches children that healthy food and physical activity are fun.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons can be taught as stand-alone lessons. Color Me Healthy is designed to be used in family daycare homes, Head Start classrooms, and childcare centers serving 4 and 5 year olds.

This project aims to spread impactful, sustainable policy and practice improvements in ECE programs to prevent childhood obesity.

ECE providers are in a special position to empower young children to learn habits that can keep them healthy for life. ADHS developed the Empower Program in 2010 as a voluntary program to support licensed ECE facilities’ efforts to empower young children to grow up healthy and is based on 10 program standards.

This book offers 52 physical activities and their variations that are fun for young children. This is designed for children to develop fundamental movement skills and physical fitness, inclusive of children with special needs.

Healthy Classrooms, Healthy Schools helps teachers transform their classroom and school into environments promoting healthy eating and physical activity. This curriculum includes two sets of supplemental lessons, one for grades K-2 and one for grades 3-5. Healthy Classrooms, Healthy schools can also be ordered with companion books that have nutrition and physical activity themes tailored to individual grades, K-5.  The curriculum includes eight lessons incorporating 27 activities. FitBits^™ is a best practice resource component that gets students up out of their seats and moving while, at the same time, reinforcing nutrition and health concepts that are aligned with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, grade level National Health Standards, and USDA MyPlate. Another accompanying resource is Health Through Literacy, which is a book set of five to six books, age-appropriate for each grade K–5. Each set includes books with nutrition or physical activity themes.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Unit 1 must be taught first and the last lesson to be taught must be the last Unit. The Units in-between may be taught in any order (Per the Ensuring Success sections “beginning and Ending the Program” and “Completing the Units”). At least 6 lessons must be taught (including the first and last Unit). Fit Bits and Health Through Literacy are supportive materials/ resource and not lessons in and of themselves.

The Eat Together, Eat Better lessons support nutrition, parent, and youth educators in teaching the importance of family meals. The lessons use a mix of interactive learning formats, including small-and large-group discussions, brainstorming, planning, and cooking activities. All of these activities create discussion, encourage problem solving, and develop skills to support family meals.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons can be taught as stand-alone lessons, but each session of the lesson must be taught (child, parent and family sessions).

Eating Smart • Being Active is a healthy eating and active living curriculum designed to be taught to limited-resource adults. The lesson plans of Eating Smart • Being Active are appropriate for use by paraprofessional (peer) nutrition educators when teaching limited-resource adults about healthy lifestyle choices. The curriculum consists of nine core lessons, each designed to be taught in less than 2 hours. All participant materials are available in English and Spanish*. All lessons include a food preparation activity and lessons 2 through 9 include a physical activity segment. Eating Smart • Being Active can be used to teach adults 1-on-1 or in small groups (2-12 people). While the materials could be used in larger groups, adult learning principles guide us toward smaller groups to encourage greater participant involvement and enhanced learning.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

The curriculum consists of nine core lessons, which are designed to be taught in order.