Student Page

What Is A Healthy Body?

The Mission

Dear Boys and Girls,

You and your parents will attend a classroom trip to a major food store with a food court for eating. The manager will escort our class to the various food departments and explain the different food sections. Your parents will also shop for their Thanksgiving foods and you will help with the shopping. Each child will write their own menu according to the nutritional values of each food group. Every child will choose a food from one of the 6 food groups to take back to school for discussion. You will save the food labels for our classroom Skit on Thanksgiving.

The next day everyone will cut out food pictures for a balanced meal from magazines and use your food labels to paste on paper plates (keeping in mind that each plate must contain the 6 food groups) and put fruit into the Thanksgiving Cornucopia.

Thanksgiving vocabulary words will be written on the board for creative thinking and usage.  I will divide the class up into sections: decoration committee, costume committee, computer committee (typing the invitations and the lines for the skit), children to play Native Americans and Pilgrims. And everyone will be involved creating the script for our Healthy Feast Skit.

Everyone will read several books about Thanksgiving (including their history books) and then you will begin to write your own short skit on “What Thanksgiving Means to Me”. Thanksgiving vocabulary words will be written on the board for creative thinking and usage.

Everyone will participate in preparing a real dessert such as fresh fruit jello, a banana pudding, or peanut butter and fresh fruit spread on whole wheat bread.

You will measure the ingredients to reinforce their math skills and type out dinner invitations to your parents or to another class to attend our skit on “The Thanksgiving Story”.  During the skit, you will discuss the importance of eating healthy and explain the visual aid chart of the Food Pyramid.

Everyone will be invited to sample the desserts after the skit Mmmm!

The Process

Week One

• Answer this short and easy questionnaire on your eating habits, exercise activities, and   your sleep patterns.

• Color, cut, and paste these food-vocabulary pictures on these blank cards.

• Let’s write a letter to your parents about our month long Health Unit and brain storm a list of food vocabulary words to put on the board so that can use to write your letter.

• Go to our health corner, read the food books, and look at our health charts.

• Write down your questions to interview the school’s nurse and cook about "Making Healthy Choices for a Healthy Body". Bring a tape recorder to record their answers.

• Draw pictures of your favorite sport you like to do during your gym time.

Week Two

• This class will be divided into four groups to make a Health Center in our classroom and that will include:  food posters, plastic foods, health magazines, picture recipe cards, colored clay for food making, a food scale, measuring utensils, and manipulatives.

• Bring food labels, food boxes, a McDonald’s food nutrition poster (calories & fats) and other food items from your home. We will display them in our Grocery Store area.

• We will color, cut, and paste pictures of food to create a food pyramid onto a large butcher paper.

• Go to our “physical fitness” corner in our classroom and we will exercise on mats while your partner helps counts your sit-ups while holding your feet down.

• Look at the different pictures of exercises on our physical education charts and see if you can do them with your partner.

Week Three

• Let’s go to the computer using the Inspiration Web Organizer software so that we can make a food pyramid. We will work with a partner, sharing our skills and information.

• After using the Inspiration web organizer, we will Cyber Hunt (see your resource list) to answer our Health questions. 

       Example:   What is a balance meal?

How do you get exercise in school and at home?

Why do we need at least eight hours of sleep?

Week Four

•  We are going on a class trip to the supermarket to shop for our non-cook food  items for our  classroom. luncheon party in our classroom.

•  We’re going to plan and implement our luncheon party and write a skit on “Eating Healthy”. Let’s divide the classroom into 4 groups:

             Group one: Plan the meal

Group two: Prepare the non-cook meal

Group three: Decoration and place setting

Group four: Write the invitation to invite parents to come

• One, write a short skit about cooking a well-balanced meal starting with writing the food list and shopping at the supermarket.

• We are going to write an invitation to our parents to join us at the Country Buffet for our end of the unit event.

• Write or draw events about our restaurant trip experience to the Country Buffet  and tell us what you  choose to eat and why?

To reinforce: Fine Motor Development, Language Arts, and Math Skills 

To make a large “Food Pyramid Floor Puzzle”…

Materials Needed:

 Large butcher-block paper

Crayons (for construction paper)

Paint (washable) & brushes

Scissors (blunt-tip child ones)

Construction Paper

Glue or paste

Markers (washable)

Rulers

Visual aide chart of a food pyramid

Real or plastic foods to see & touch