Pour Some Sugar on Me

Flu and cold season is upon us again and if you are anything like me, a day of 30 coughing kids can make you want to go home and dive into a bath of hand sanitizer. Helping students understand what germs are and how they spread is essential for the health of you and your students this winter.  A class full of germ-conscious kids who properly wash their hands regularly would be great, right?  Joann and I featured germ-related activities in our posts about germs last year.  Be sure to check them out on our blog archive here and here. 

On a similar note, Halloween traditions can bring up a whole new set of healthy eating teachable moments for your classroom.  As the kids are slowly coming out of the sugar rush of Halloween and building up to the feeding frenzy (more commonly known as Thanksgiving) in America, teachers have a chance to set a good example and teach kids more about the food they are putting into their bodies every day.  I know that I had more than my fair share of added sugar on Halloween, and as I was enjoying it, I started thinking about the added sugar in my diet.  There are lots of nutrition related activities you can implement into your class, but this week I thought sugar would be a timely and appropriate topic.

How much added sugar are we really supposed to be getting anyways?  According to the American Heart Association, women shouldn’t have more than about 5 teaspoons a day (20 grams) and men shouldn’t have more than 9 (36 grams).  Children should be limited to 3 teaspoons (or 12 grams) of added sugar per day.  Most Americans get more than 22 teaspoons, a fact that might surprise some of your students.  These numbers don’t include the sugar naturally founds in food like fruit.  This is the sugar that is added into many foods for extra sweetness.

This fall, I want to help students hunt down the hidden sugar in their diets.  They probably have plenty of Halloween candy to use in this activity, so I plan to ask them to each bring in a few pieces.  If they don’t have candy, they can bring in wrappers and containers from other popular items like yogurt, cereal, soda, and other packaged snacks.  Unfortunately, the nutrition information isn’t on most fun-size candy passed out during trick-or-treating, so you might need to do some online research.  Looking up the information online is a good technology lesson in itself, or you can provide students a list of sugar content in popular candies.  This list is a good starting point.

When looking at ingredients, remember that the sugar content is usually listed under carbohydrates. Sometimes it’s hard for students to figure out which sugar is naturally occurring and which is added, but the numbers will give you a rough idea of the amount of added sugar.  The amounts are generally listed in grams, a weight measurement students might not be familiar with.  They might be more familiar with a volume measurement like a teaspoon.  What does a gram of sugar look like?  The following idea is for an activity that will let students see the amount of sugar in each of their snacks.

For this activity, I will start with 3 baby food jars (or snack size zipper bags) in the front of the classroom, each one representing the maximum amount of daily added sugar that kids and adults should get per day (3, 5, and 9 teaspoons).  After a discussion of added sugars, I will let the kids research their own snacks and create jars or bags of the amount of sugar in each of their snacks. 

For kids old enough to do the math themselves, there is roughly 4 grams of sugar in each teaspoon (this can vary slightly by granularity of the sugar, but it makes for a easy conversion for kids to use).  They can simply divide the number of grams of sugar by 4 to determine the approximate number of teaspoons of sugar in the snack.

I will also make a few examples, so I am sure there is a wide range of snacks.  I will do an example bag for a can of soda, a sweetened yogurt, and a typical serving of a sugary cereal.  Once the kids have created their bags of sugar, I will let them creatively present their results to the class.  It might be a neat exercise to line up the bags with their wrappers in order of how much added sugar they have.  If we do this, we can make a class chart so we can remember and compare our results. 

Here are some more Gateway resources that will help you study added sugars with your class:

Reading Labels: Which Snack is the Best Choice?

http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-04-10.9162408692

Put Your Favorite Beverage to the Test

http://www.thegateway.org/browse/32769

Good Snack, Smart Snack

http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2007-10-09.8279893203

Sugary cereals

http://www.thegateway.org/browse/9203

Candy bar fractions

http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-09-25.6576047958

~ Peggy's Corner - November 1, 2011~

You Are What You Eat

You can hardly turn on the TV any more without seeing some kind of a message about healthy eating. Jamie Oliver is trying to change school cafeterias in his “Food Revolution” series while “The Biggest Loser” shows contestants learning to eat right and exercise to lose weight. In between shows on the Disney Channel, my kids love watching “Captain Carlos” and “Tasty Time With ZeFronk,” both shorts that target healthy eating for the preschool set. We might enjoy watching this type of programming, but are our kids truly taking the healthy eating message to heart? Despite all of the publicity, the figures Joann cited in her Battle of the Bulge post are astounding. Our kids don’t seem to be getting any thinner.

Young kids are not always aware of what they are eating and how it affects their body. They are hungry, and they eat what adults buy them to eat. The resources we are featuring this week from Nourish Interactive help teachers encourage students to be more aware of what they are eating. One activity has students record what they eat for an entire day. Better yet, you can have them color in part of a food group on a worksheet each time they eat something from that group. (There are plenty of printable options on the Nourish Interactive site.) This might help them figure out for themselves where their eating is out of balance. Another simple activity to try involves coloring a character for each healthy lunch they eat at school. This can help your students critically think about what they are putting into their bodies during lunchtime. Lunchtime for me (especially during junior high and high school) was a time when nutrition went completely out the window. Who says cheese fries and Skittles isn’t a healthy lunch?

Speaking of lunch, another fun resource for learning about nutrition is Fizzy’s Lunch Lab from PBS Kids Go! This site has episodes of the show to watch online and healthy, kid-friendly recipes, complete with Nutrition Facts labels that look just like the ones found on pre-packaged snacks. The site also has printable placemats, outdoor game instructions, and online games. It could be a good website for home-enrichment activities during a unit on healthy eating habits, and many of the activities would also work well in an elementary classroom as well.

Healthy eating is only part of the solution, though. Students need to be given an opportunity to exercise during the day and to learn to love being active. P.E. Central struck me as a very important resource for many of us who are in schools with limited budgets and limited (or nonexistent) physical education programs. The activity about reading snack labels looks especially effective, since it includes movement. Not only do they have to figure out that one serving of Cheez-Its has 140 calories, they have to jump rope 140 times as well. You could implement this kind of active lesson into all kinds of different subject areas to get kids without P.E. moving every day. Another neat part of the P.E. Central website is the LogIt program that allows students to log their daily physical activity steps or miles. Classes can compete for prizes and take virtual hikes across the country to motivate students to become more physically active. This activity would be good for a P.E. class, and it would also work to increase physical activity in a regular classroom.

Good luck helping your students adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle! I hope these resources give you a running start.

~Peggy's Corner - 5/8/2010~

Battle of the Bulge

Childhood obesity has become a major concern for nations worldwide. According to a recent report, the percentage of obese or overweight U.S. children is at or above 30% in 30 states. Childhood obesity rates in Canada have nearly tripled in the last 25 years, while in Europe, one in five children is either overweight or obese. In an attempt to curb the battle of the bulge, Massachusetts, Arkansas, and New York City all now require schools to calculate students’ BMI (Body Mass Index) to determine obesity. Many schools have completely revamped their cafeteria offerings, and booted vending machines from their campuses. These are steps in the right direction, but developing healthy eating habits is a life skill that students need to hone both at home and in the classroom.

We all know that good nutrition is vital for good health and ample energy, and that maintaining a proper weight helps prevent conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and other ailments. Getting students to buy into healthy eating, though, can be a challenge. If your students are like my kids, their idea of “good” nutrition is food that is individually wrapped and artificially flavored. They need to be made consistently aware that making healthy choices pays rich dividends in increased energy and good health now and in the future.

This week’s picks are from Nourish Interactive and PE Central, two organizations that focus on educational materials relating to student health. Nourish Interactive, Inc. is dedicated to educating children about the importance of nutrition and exercise. To this end, the organization offers fun, innovative games and online tools that help empower kids to make healthy choices. In addition to lesson plans and interactive nutrition games, Nourish Interactive offers printable worksheets on healthy eating for teachers and parents. PE Central is a Web site devoted to providing the latest information about developmentally appropriate physical education programs for children and youth. The site is aimed at health and physical education teachers, parents, and students.

BMI for Kids – Body Mass Index
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-04-10.0032905069
Subjects: Nutrition, Health
Grade: K-5
Using an online BMI (Body Mass Index) calculator, students learn about how a healthy lifestyle and good nutrition keeps their bodies healthy. While students do not see an actual number or percentage for their entered data, they do see the animated characters get taller or smaller with different weight and height data, and hear a positive message promoting daily exercise and healthy eating. The lesson includes a link to view the materials in Spanish.

Bon Appetite Arcade
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-04-10.7159101129
Subjects: Nutrition, Health
Grade: 2-5
This timed activity presents a fun arcade game that requires students to use the computer mouse to shoot forks at food items in order to create balanced meals and score points. The lesson includes a link to view the materials in Spanish.


Reading Labels: Which Snack is the Best Choice? http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2010-04-10.9162408692
Subjects: Health, Nutrition
Grade: 9-12
This activity teaches students how to determine the nutritional information in snacks. Students identify different parts of labels, and compare the nutritional value in a variety of snacks.


~Joann's Picks - 5/8/2010~

Bones of Contention

We all know the old adage “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” From now until the end of time, there will always be issues that are likely to cause disagreements between adults and kids. Proper nutrition, curfews, and studying are just a few examples of topics most likely to act as proverbial burrs under kids’ saddles. Here are some resources that can help students tackle those subjects that they are sometimes less-than enthusiastic about.


Granny Prix

http://www.thegateway.org/recordBase/dcrecord.2010-01-07.1627839647
Subjects: Addition
Grade: K- 6

On some days, my 7 year-old would prefer to poke her eye out with a hot stick rather than practice her math facts. On those days, I set her up with a math game such as Granny Prix. This hilarious online game features jaunty music and four grannies racing down a hallway in tricked-out wheelchairs. Granny Prix is a free product produced by Exuberant Games, a company founded by multimedia programmer and illustrator Natasha Oliver.

What’s not to like about Granny Prix? The game allows students to practice/review addition math facts 1-12 by looking at an equation, and then selecting the correct answer from five possible choices. The faster the student answers, the faster his/her granny goes. At game’s end, any missed equations are displayed in a “Problems You Missed” section, and the student’s overall time to answer all the questions is given. Students can customize their grannies (rainbow Mohawk, anyone?) and their wheelchairs for added fun. What’s that you say? Your Nana can beat my Nana? BRING IT ON! The game is also available for subtraction facts 1-12 as well.



Eat Five a Day
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2008-06-25.5426738620
Subjects: Nutrition
Grade: K-2

I was standing behind a family in the grocery store line the other day, and overheard this conversation between two boys:

Boy 1: I hate lima beans
Boy 2: Why does she get them? Everyone HATES them.
Boy 1: They make me gag.
Boy 2: Yeah, they’re diabolical.
Boy 1: They’re green. Anything green is gross.
Boy 2: Food shouldn’t be green.

Sound familiar? Can you recall the last time your students didn’t groan when the daily vegetable from that day’s lunch menu was read aloud? This lesson discusses the importance of eating at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. The lesson is designed for students with moderate disabilities.

Teaching the food pyramid and the role of fruits and vegetables can be uninspiring, for both teachers and students. This lesson livens things up by including a field trip to a local grocery store to purchase fruit and vegetables that students select. Students get to sample more uncommon items (kiwi, perhaps, or mangoes), and create a newsletter with pictures about what they have learned. This lesson is produced by ALEX, the Alabama Learning Exchange and is aligned to Alabama Content Standards.

Teen Curfew
http://www.thegateway.org/recordBase/dcrecord.2010-01-06.2687247827
Subjects: Civics
Grade: 10-12

While teachers don’t really have to worry about their students’ curfews, it’s an important topic to teens and therefore good fodder for discussion. The subject of curfews can be worked into many areas of the curriculum, especially in lessons where personal responsibility or legal issues are emphasized. In this activity, students consider a proposed teen curfew law in a mock city council session.

One of the things that I like about this activity is that it examines citizens’ roles in policy debate. Teens can be ambivalent about politics, but the mock city council format offers them the chance to advocate for and against a topic they know intimately. The activity is offered by the American Bar Association (ABA), the largest voluntary legal professional association in the world. The ABA offers lesson plans and activities for all ages that focus on how our laws and the legal system protect individuals’ freedoms.


Studying More Productively
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2008-08-14.1100026554
Subjects: Study skills, Family life
Grade: 7-12

The transition from elementary or intermediate school to middle school can be rocky for many students. Along with changing classes and sometimes even buildings, homework loads also usually increase substantially. Many students experience difficulty managing the volume of homework, and need to learn how to study. This resource provides tips for students on how to study more productively.

I like that this handy guide is comprehensive, yet brief enough to retain students’ interest. Topics include studying, test preparation, note-taking, and tips on taking tests. It’s very readable, and the sections are broken into chunks so that students can refer to just the sections that pertain to them at that time. The guide was written by the New Jersey Education Association, which sponsors events, lobbies for public education and offers publications and educational materials.

~Joann's Picks~