Healthy Living Initiative

Program Type: 
Kitchen Classrooms, Garden Classrooms
Grade Level/Age Group: 
Upper Elementary, Kindergarten
About the Program: 

StarChild Science is a science education company in Carmel, California. It is designed to help teachers and parents educate children in physical science and nutrition. Currently, our Healthy Living Initiative is offering a Healthy Choices poster to schools, health organizations and associations, medical clinics and public libraries. This poster is designed to keep children focused on healthy choices. View the Healthy Choices poster at:

http://www.starchildscience.org/products/healthy-living-initiative-poster

What child doesn't know what a neighborhood looks like? Almost every child in this country lives in a neighborhood. But recently, we have been told that 30% of American children are obese. So one can only guess that a fairly large number of American neighborhoods are not "healthy choices" neighborhoods.

We plan on changing that. When our Healthy Choices poster is hanging up in a school lunch room the conversations between the students sound like "Facebook" coversations. They are personal and tell a great deal about what the children are thinking about when it comes to healthy choices. The Healthy Choices poster:

1.  helps the children communicate freely with fellow students about their favorite fruits and veggies

2. allows them to talk to fellow students about healthy foods that they are already eating

3. helps them focus on making healthy choices for their school lunch

4. allows a child to tell fellow students how he/she used to make unhealthy choices at mealtime

When hanging up in a family kitchen the Healthy Choices poster can do many things for children:

1. It encourages a child to talk about dinner menus, organize lunch ideas with his/her parents, and plan breakfast specials for the week

2. inspires a child to start to focus on organic gardening at home and at school, even if it is only a window box herb garden

3. strongly suggests to a child to accompany a parent to the grocery store and look for healthy choices to purchase together

The childhood obesity epidemic is beatable if we addess it in a way that makes sense to the child. We think we have done that in this poster image. By the constant presence of the Healthy Choices poster children don't have to be reminded over and over to eat healthy foods. They just get to choose each day what vegggie and fruit they are going to eat. How fun is that?

Program Members: