Our study on The Human Body is coming to a close, and we are ending it with a study on Nutrition. It has come at the most perfect time. We have been having some "chunkey monkey" issues with our littlest one and using this opportunity to learn about healthy food choices will be very beneficial to her.
Brynne and I have been discussing healthy food choices versus non-healthy food choices. We have discussed that eating treats are okay, as long as they do not tip the balance of the Food Pyramid.
We read the book Showdown at the Food Pyramid, that demonstrated this perfectly in a cute story! We have referred back to it many times this weekend.
Brynne made a large Food Pyramid by cutting out pictures of people exercising, and different foods from the food groups (notice that she put Goldfish crackers in the milk category because they have "cheese" in them).
We used the USDA My Pyramid for Kids site to learn about the Food Pyramid.
She played the game Blast Off many times, building daily menus. This was a great visual for her to see how to choose foods from the major food groups without going over a recommended daily calorie base. It also reinforced that she should be having 60 minutes of exercise every day. She has been very diligent since then to make sure she rides her scooter, or plays, or something several times a day. She has been outside a lot in the past several days, since we started this project. I have also been diligent about finding ways for her to get physical activity.
Also to help her out, I purchased her snacks (that we chose together) and put them into little snack-size ziplock bags of 100 calories each. We put those, and other pre-packaged health(ier) snacks in a tub in the pantry for her to choose her snacks from. She can have one of those snacks a day, and then needs to choose a fruit or dairy item as her other snack.
It's great that we can use this lesson on nutrition to jump start Brynne into a healthy lifestyle. The rest of the kids are tall and super skinny. They have naturally fast metabolisms. Brynne is built a little stockier, and more solid, and her metabolism is obviously slower than the other kids. We have always tried to lead a healthy lifestyle. It's time, now, to teach it to Brynne. And she is an eager learner.
We are linking up with Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.
I love the chunky monkey analogy. Too cute! I must say that we had the same problem until he went thew a growth spurt and it took care of itself. But it's always good to teach healthy choices when they're young.
ReplyDeleteGreat lessons to teach the kids. My sons always loved that blast off game. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great way to teach her that. I bet she loved it!
ReplyDeleteSo, am I the only one who doesn't like the new design for the food pyramid?