Healthy Food Choices, K-2

Charlotte Pendlebury and Julia Jones

1. Student internet source: Fizzy’s Lunch Lab

 

General Information: Fizzy’s Lunch Lab is a fabulous website that is selected for kids K-2 to learn about healthy food choices. There are videos that explain the benefits of certain food choices such as protein and calcium, or ways to make a healthy dinner as a family. There are also recipes that kids would be interested in and able to make with help, like berry smoothies, black bean burritos, and chicken noodle soup. Other features of the site include informative and catchy songs and educational games that range in difficulty and activity type. This website is published by PBS and has lots of important information about nutrition that is presented in a kid-friendly way. I would use this resource to show videos to the class that taught them how to eat healthily and how to include their family in their food choices and have discussions about ways to use what they learned in their daily lives.

 

Core Integration: One way to integrate this site into a core topic would be to use the recipes in a math lesson. In kindergarten, we could use the whole wheat grilled cheese recipe to practice adding by finding how many ingredients we needed. For first and second grade, we could create problems that would include situations such as wanting to make fruit kebabs and needing to know how much fruit we had in total and how much fruit we needed per skewer. If possible, we may be able to make some recipes (such as fruit kebabs) in class and have a lesson with a snack reward at the end.

 

Standards:

Healthy Behavior Outcomes for Healthy Eating

1. Eat the appropriate number of servings from each food group every day.
2. Eat a variety of foods within each food group every day.
3. Eat an abundance of fruits and vegetables every day.
4. Choose to eat whole grain products and fat-free or low-fat milk or equivalent milk products regularly.
5. Drink plenty of water every day.
6. Limit foods and beverages high in added sugars, solid fat, and sodium.
7. Eat breakfast every day.
8. Eat healthy snacks.
9. Eat healthy foods when dining out.
10. Follow an eating plan for healthy growth and development.

NHES 1: Core Concepts

• 2.2: Explain the importance of choosing healthy foods and beverages. (HBO 1-9 & 12)
• 2.3: Identify a variety of healthy snacks. (HBO 2-5, 8 & 12)

NHES 2: Analyze Influences

• 2.1: Identify relevant influences of family on food choices and other eating practices and behaviors.

NHES 5: Decision Making

• 2.1 Identify situations that need a healthy eating-related decision.

For the math lessons:

• Math.Content.K.OA.A.1

Represent addition and subtraction with objects, fingers, mental images, drawings¹, sounds (e.g., claps), acting out situations, verbal explanations, expressions, or equations.

• Math.Content.1.OA.A.1

Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.¹

• Math.Content.2.OA.A.1

Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve one- and two-step word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.¹

• Math.Content.2.OA.C.3

Determine whether a group of objects (up to 20) has an odd or even number of members, e.g., by pairing objects or counting them by 2s; write an equation to express an even number as a sum of two equal addends.

 

2. Internet Source for Teachers: Choose My Plate

 

General Information: Choose My Plate is the best internet website selected for teachers on K-2 healthy food choices. This website explains what a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner should look like for kids of all ages using descriptions, examples, and pictures. This is a government website, which means it is reliable enough for teachers to take the information from the website and teach it to their students. This website is more difficult to navigate, that’s why it’s a great site for teachers and not students K-2 or their parents. Teachers can browse numerous topics on health other than healthy food choices.

 

Core Integration: This site leads me to a resource called “Serving Up MyPlate: A Yummy Curriculum” that is a collection of classroom materials to help educators integrate nutritional information into core subjects. One example is “Fun with Food Groups”, which meets standards in English Language Arts, Math, Science, and Health. The activity has three sessions: “First Taste”, “Digging In”, and “Digesting It All.” First Taste has students think about and discuss what it means to be and eat healthy, followed by a song and discussion of the MyPlate poster. Digging In involves listing different foods and identifying what food group they go in, making Food Cards for each group, and then playing a Musical Food Groups game. Finally, in Digesting It All students revisit what it means to be and eat healthy, and then work in pairs to create one week’s worth of dinners using MyPlate.

Standards:

Lesson standards:

• English Language Arts: Speaking and Listening Standards: Comprehension and Collaboration (1.1, 2.1): Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners; Reading Standards: Foundational Skills/Fluency (1.4, 2.4): Read with sufficient fluency to support comprehension.
• Science: Standard (A): Science as an inquiry: Understandings about Scientific Inquiry.
• Health: Standard (1.2.1): Identify that healthy behaviors impact personal health.
• Math: Number and Operations in Base Ten (1, 2): Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.

NHES Standards:

• Healthy Behavior Outcomes for Healthy Eating
  • Eat a variety of foods within each food group every day.
• NHES 2: Analyze Influences:
  • 2.4: Describe positive influences on personal food choices and other eating practices and behaviors.
  • 2.5: Describe the negative influences on personal food choices and other eating practices and behaviors.

 

3. Internet Source for Parents: Kids Health

 

General Information: Kids Health is a website found that will be beneficial to parents to browse on nutrition & fitness, recipes, and other helpful topics for their  K-2 students. Kids Health is easy to navigate with drop-down tabs. Each tab even includes a helpful Q&A section on topics that parents may have many questions on. I would introduce this site to my parents in a weekly newsletter, as long as linking the Kids Health website on my classroom page so it is accessible 24/7. Parents want to be a part of their kids lives inside and outside of the classroom, as a future educator, it is important to give the parents as many resources as I can to help them learn as their children are learning.