Mark Your Calendar

Description

Create a chart with a list of the students’ names and each day of the month. (Instead of the student’s names, you could also use a “code name” that each student picks for themselves. Students could choose a healthier food item such as kiwi, mango, steak, etc., to use as their code name.)

Before lining up for lunch, have students stand up next to their desks, or if space allows have students spread out in the classroom. Have all of the students do 10 jumping jacks and 10 toe touches, alternating 2 times for a total of 20 jumping jacks and 20 toe touches. Have the students add a sticker to the chart under their name for that day if they participated in the class activity or did some type of physical activity outside of school.

When the students return from lunch, ask who ate a serving of a fruit or vegetable. For every day the student eats a fruit or vegetable, he or she can put a sticker on that day.

At the end of the month, tally up the food and activity stickers. See if the class can improve the tally each month.

Lunges

Description

Instruct students to stand with their feet shoulder width apart and their hands on their hips. Have them be sure to keep their stomach muscles tight and their back straight in line with your hips. Tell them to lunge forward with one foot, being sure to keep the knee straight in line with the ankle. Remind them not to let the knee go over the toe when they lunge. Have them slowly squat down, gently touching their back knee to the ground, and slowly raise their body back to standing. Step forward and repeat with the opposite leg in front. They can perform the lunges in place, or they can start at one end of the hallway or gymnasium and perform the exercise across the space available. To make the exercise more challenging, students can put their hands above their heads, or even hold a medicine ball, or a heavier object to add more resistance.

Label Decoder

Description

Have students bring in one or two Nutrition Facts Labels from home or provide them with one. Have the student read the ingredient list. (If the student is too young to read, the teacher can read the list.) When reading the label, look for words that:

are hard to say
do not sound like whole food ingredients, for example, apple (foods that you eat that contain one ingredient)
sounds like chemicals are artificial colors or flavors.

Tell the students to jump up vertically for each number of words in the ingredient list (i.e. 6 ingredients=6 vertical jumps) and then have them jump side to side for every word that they cannot pronounce or don’t know how to say (i.e. can’t pronounce 3 words=jump side to side 3 times).

Note: Any other variations of body movements will work for this activity.

Compare these “foods” to foods that do not have an ingredient list, like apples or celery. The more ingredients listed on a food package and the more words that are hard to pronounce means that the food is likely more processed and may not be as healthful for us.

Another version would be to compare a homemade recipe, such as mayonnaise, to a store bought version. What are the differences?

Jump Rope Fun

Description

Hand out one jump rope per student. Allow students to jump rope for five minutes. After they have had a chance to jump rope on their own, encourage them to try the following jump rope ideas or come up with their own unique way of getting exercise with a jump rope.

X-it – Cross your feet so your legs look like and X.
Slalom – Jump side to side like you are going downhill.
Jumping jacks – Move your legs apart and together like you are doing a jumping jack.
Twister – Jump and twist at the waist.
Hop on one foot – Jump on one foot at a time.
Alternating step – Jump on one foot at a time, kicking the other foot out in front like the running man.
Boxer – Jump rope like boxers do, running while jumping.
Heel tap – Tap your heels in front of you while jumping, one foot at a time.
Toe tap – Tap your toe in front of you while jumping, one foot at a time.

Act it Out

Description

While reading out loud, ask the youth to listen for the action verbs. Each time one comes up, move like the word! For example, if a sentence says, “The worm wiggled through the hole in the dirt”, have youth wiggle!

Heart Walk Activity

Description

Remind students that physical activity is good for the heart. The heart is a muscle that works better when we are active.

Ask students to trace their footprint on a sheet of drawing paper or construction paper. Inside the footprint, have the student write in a simple activity, such as:

“Do 10 jumping jacks” or “Do five curl-ups.”

Have the students trace their other foot on the backside of the paper and write a different activity on this footprint.

Make a path by laying the footprints around the edge of the classroom or the gym. Invite students to exercise their heart muscle and their other muscles by following the path and doing the activities written on the footprints.

Heart Pumping Activity

Description

Five minutes before the class is ready to go to the gym or outside to do the physical activity, have the students do the following hand/heart pump.

The class should stand up, push their chairs in, if appropriate, and raise both hands to shoulder level. Open and close each hand continually: close the hand, and then open it all the way.

Continue this pattern (open, close, open, etc.) for 5 minutes. During this time, keep watching the students. If someone stops, remind him or her to keep going.

After 1 minute, ask if they are tired of doing it yet. If no one is tired of it yet, continue to do it for 5 minutes.

Ask again if anyone is tired of doing this hand pumping yet.

When someone finally announces that he or she is tired, explain that this hand pumping action is just like the heart. The heart is continually pumping and cannot stop at any time. When it is tired, it has to keep on going.

Explain that this is one reason that you have to keep feeding it good, healthful food. The heart needs good food to keep it going, whether it is tired or not. If there is too much fat around the heart and other parts of the body, it makes the heart work harder in order to get the blood to all parts of the body.

Make sure to eat the right foods so that the heart can work well. Avoid eating too much, or the wrong types of food, because the heart has to work all the harder to do its job.

As you are walking to the gym or outdoors, have the students continue to pump their hands all the way there. Gather the students to talk about the activity that they will next be doing. Have them continue to pump their hands. As you notice students “dropping out,” remind them to keep doing it.

Hacky Sack Challenge

Description

Keep it up and moving – hands free!

Pass out one hacky sack (often called a footbag) to each student. Explain and demonstrate the basic concept of using their feet, legs and head to keep the bag off of the floor.

Hands are only used to start the movement of the hacky sack, but shouldn’t be used once the bag is in motion. Once the students have had a few minutes to experiment with the hacky sack, tell them to pair up with another student or two. Have each group try to use the hacky sack between their group members. Remind the students to count the number of times it hits a body part before falling to the floor.

Other variations include:

• The person who can keep the hacky sack in motion the longest wins.

• The person who was able to bounce the hacky sack off of the most body parts wins.

• Challenge a group of three or more to pass it to each participant at least once before it hits the ground.

Food and Fitness Freeze Frames

Description

Have students use their arms and legs to make body shapes to resemble foods from selected food groups from the MyPlate diagram (example – fruits – use your arms/legs/body to form the shape of an apple, orange, or banana).

Variation: Have the students stretch their muscles while they shape the form of a fitness person in action

(example, tennis player, basketball player shooting a basket). Hold each action shot for 20 seconds to stretch muscles and then rotate to a different position.

For the final stretch have the students’ think of their own fitness pose or fruit and on your call have them create the pose. If time allows – go around the room asking students what pose they have created or have other students guess their pose.

Follow the Leader

Description

When youth are in a single-file line (on the way to lunch, gym, music class, etc.), have the leader make a gesture as he or she starts walking (example: raising arms above head and bringing them back down to the side). Make sure each gesture is something that can be done as the youth walk. After the leader finishes the gesture, the next person in line follows by doing the same gesture (the “domino effect”). The next person can do the gesture only after the person ahead has finished. When the leader thinks everyone has had a chance to move, he or she can start the next move; however, the leader can choose how long to wait before starting the next move. A small break between moves can be more fun! The line can also move in an s-shaped pattern.