Bulletin Board

Helping your Students Meet their Nutrition Goals

January 20, 2012

What is your New Year's resolution? As you help your students develop their nutrition and physical activity goals for the upcoming year, think of ways you can create an environment to help them achieve those goals.

As a teacher, you are a significant influence in your students' lives. By promoting nutrition in your classroom and being a positive role model, you can create a supportive environment to help your students pursue their nutrition and physical activity goals.

Here are some steps you can take to help support the nutrition and physical activity of your students:

1.     Help your students meet their Canada's Food Guide recommendations: Many Canadian children aren't getting enough of the nutrients they need.  Help your students learn how they can use Canada's Food Guide to make healthy choices and encourage them to meet the recommended number of servings for their age group.  Try to promote the use of Canada's Food Guide by incorporating the resource into class activities and challenges.  Here are some engaging tracking tools that you can order for free for your students.

2.     Offer opportunities for kids to get active:  Canadian children need to get at least 60 minutes of exercise per day. Try to think of creative ways to incorporate physical activity into your lessons. Offer opportunities for your students to participate in a variety of different forms of physical activity.  By offering a range of activities to choose from, you can increase the chance of children finding a sport or activity that interests them.  Consider providing equipment and/or game ideas for students to try during recess.

3.     Encourage your students to get hands-on with food:  Food preparation activities provide children with the opportunity to try new foods and to develop positive attitudes and behaviours around food and eating. Introducing snack preparation activities in your classroom can be a great way to teach kids about foods and foster the development of food skills. Encourage hands-on experiences with food at home by providing students with recipes they can try or asking them to work with their caregivers to come up with their own recipes.

4.     Communicate with Caregivers:  By informing caregivers of the nutrition facts and skills being taught in the classroom, you can help them reinforce healthy active living messages at home. Consider incorporating nutrition and physical activity content into your emails or newsletters. Here are some division-specific nutrition and physical activity facts that you can cut and paste into communications with parents.