February is a great time to talk about heart health and nutrition. Below you will find information and vocabulary words to help students understand the connection between nutrition and heart health. Share this information with students and help them achieve healthy habits for happy hearts.

A normal heart is a strong muscular pump.It is a little larger than the size of your fist, and during an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times. The average heart beats about 100,000 times each day and pumps about 7,200 litres (1,900 gallons) of blood.

Your heart pumps blood to the organs, tissues, and cells of your body, delivering oxygen and nutrients to every cell and removing carbon dioxide and waste products made by those cells.

When there is too much cholesterol in the blood, it can damage the arteries and veins that carry blood  throughout the body.

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Schools 2012 – February

Trivia Ball

You will need a small, light ball to play this game.

• Participants sit in a circle and decide on a category related to nutrition (for example: whole grains, lean proteins, green vegetables, sources of Vitamin C, etc.).
• One participant throws the ball to another participant in the circle, who immediately names an item in the category and throws the ball to someone else.
• If a participant can’t think of anything, or repeats something that’s already been said, that player is out. Designate an exercise (10 jumping jacks, 5 push-ups, run two laps, etc.) that participants can do to get back into the game.

Choose a new category when a majority of participants begin to have trouble naming items.

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Parks & Recreation 2012 – February

Please take a look at some of our entries from the Sunnyside Parks and Rec Sites.

Rudolph the Healthy (Red-nosed) Reindeer

Rudolph the cherry nose reindeer had a very healthy nose and if you ever saw it you would even say it taste like juice. All of the other reindeers didn’t like nutrition so they used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in their junk food ways. Then one nutritious Christmas Eve, Santa came to say Rudolph with your activity so right won’t you practice with us tonight. Then all the other reindeer loved him as they shouted out with glee, Rudolph the cherry nosed reindeer you’ll go down in nutrition history.

~Submitted by: Los Niños

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Parks & Recreation 2012 – January

Energy balance is the number of calories consumed, compared to the number of calories used by the body. If you use as many calories as you consume, you can maintain a healthy weight.

Metabolism, is the rate at which people break down food for energy, and it is different from person to person, based on age, gender, activity level, and other factors.

Basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the amount of calories that your body uses for all of your basic daily functions, like breathing and keeping your body warm. This rate also varies from person to person.

For Completer Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Schools 2012 – January

Try these activities with your participants!

With the winter holidays often come many classroom celebrations and holiday themed activities. Below are  10 simple suggestions for activities you can do in the classroom, or ways to put a healthy spin on holiday festivities.

1. Ask students to think of a healthy holiday food for every letter of the alphabet. Make it more challenging by asking them to include an adjective that begins with the same letter.
2. Give “active time” as rewards or as part of the celebration. Ask students to put their favorite active recess games on slips of paper and draw out one or two suggestions. Then, during your holiday celebration, go outside and play the selected games.
3. Create a colorful, healthy tree in your classroom. Click here for food group ornaments that students can color. Then, you can put them on a real or paper tree in your classroom.

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Schools 2011 – December

Fitting in Fruits and Veggies:

The USDA recommends focusing on one theme for four months to really drive the message home and give participants and families a chance to apply tips and make changes, one small step at a time. So continue talking with your participants about the importance of fruits and veggies throughout the month. Below are a few tips from ChooseMyPlate.gov to encourage your participants to share with their families.

• Brighten your plate with vegetables that are red, orange, or dark green. They are full of vitamins and minerals. Try acorn squash, cherry tomatoes, sweet potatoes, or collard greens. They not only taste great but also are good for you, too.

• Whip up a quick dip for veggies with yogurt and seasonings such as herbs or garlic. Serve with raw vegetables like broccoli, carrots, or cauliflower. Fruit chunks go great with a yogurt and cinnamon or vanilla dip

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Parks & Recreation 2011 – November

Fitting in Fruits and Veggies

The USDA recommends focusing on one theme per quarter to really drive the message home and give students and families a chance to apply tips and make changes, one small step at a time. We encourage you to continue talking with your students about the importance of fruits and veggies throughout the month. Below are a few tips from ChooseMyPlate.gov to share with your students.

• Brighten your plate with vegetables that are red, orange, or dark green. They are full of vitamins and minerals. Try acorn squash, cherry tomatoes, sweet potatoes, or collard greens. They not only taste great but also are good for you, too.

• Whip up a quick dip for veggies with yogurt and seasonings such as herbs or garlic. Serve with raw vegetables like broccoli, carrots, or cauliflower. Fruit chunks go great with a yogurt and cinnamon or vanilla dip.

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles  Schools 2011 – November

Halloween will be here before we know it! As kids dress up in their costumes and candy takes center stage in grocery stores around town, you can still be a Champion for Change and encourage healthy celebrations. Below are a few ideas to have a happy, healthy, Halloween!

• Bring in a variety of 100% fruit juices, and talk with your participants about the nutrition benefits of each. Then, have them pick 2 or 3 juices in sample sizes to make their own Witch’s Brew.
• Talk with participants about the benefits of orange fruits and vegetables (all the vitamin A is great for maintaining eye sight!), then sample different orange fruits and vegetables. Possible foods include carrots, oranges, pumpkin, yams/sweet potatoes,orange bell peppers, cantaloup, apricots, and nectarines.
• Make a jack-o-lantern and then roast and taste the seeds!
• Have a ‘Fear Factor’ tasting and challenge participants to try less common fruits and vegetables. See who can taste them without making a face.
• Instead of bobbing for apples in a bucket of water, have kids try to “snap” a bite from an apple hanging on a string. Tie a string around the stem, then loop it around a tree branch (or pole).  For sanitary purposes, use a new apple with each participant.  Afterwards, let the participants sample the apples and discuss their health benefits.

Healthy Halloween Relay Race

There are lots of silly ways for kids to get from the starting line to the finish! Try having them stagger like zombies, fly on broomsticks like witches, or hop like toads. To incorporate nutrition, have each team represent a different food group. Before each participant can take their turn, they must name a food in that group or a benefit of that food group.

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Parks & Rec 2011 – October

This month, we are focusing on foods to increase, and we encourage you and your students to Vary your Veggies! Below are a few fun facts and some science vocabulary words you can share with your students as you encourage them to eat more vegetables.

• Vegetables are low in fat and contain a lot of vitamins and minerals. Green-Yellow-Orange vegetables are rich sources of calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, beta-carotene, vitamin B-complex, vitamin C, vitamin A, and vitamin K.
• Vegetables also contain antioxidants that protect the body from diseases and cancers by boosting immunity.
• In addition, vegetables contain soluble and insoluble dietary fiber like cellulose, gums, mucilage, and pectin. These fibers absorb excess water which helps with digestion.
• Before you get out the peeler for your potatoes, you might want to reconsider. Most of the nutrients in a potato reside just below the skin layer, and you wouldn’t want to peel them away!
• Green bell peppers have twice as much vitamin C as citrus fruit, red peppers have three times as much. Hot peppers contain 357% more vitamin C than an orange.
• Cauliflower contains sulphorafane (“sul-for-ah-fane”) and indoles (“in-doles”). These are phytochemicals (“fight-o-chemicals”) that may help reduce the risk of certain cancers. Phytochemicals are natural substances produced by plants.

For Complete Newsletter: Nutrition Nibbles Schools 2011 – October