Childhood Obesity Prevention Toolkit

For Rural Communities

Read examples of obesity prevention initiatives and strategies for educators, health providers and policy makers of rural communities.

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Coming up with new, fun ways to promote healthy habits in the classroom can be challenging. We've made it easy for you by listing resources and information on healthy eating, physical activity, screen time, good sleep routines, and emotional health.

Nutrition

Healthy Eating Handouts & Resources

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For Parents
For Kids

Browse additional resources on healthy eating for children in the classroom and the child care setting.

Nemours Resources for Child Care

More Resources

  • Healthy Vending Guide (PDF): ways to support healthy eating by implementing healthy vending machine options
  • Healthy Concessions Guide (PDF): ideas to make your concession offerings more healthy for kids and families
  • Team Nutrition: a comprehensive plan from the USDA to promote the nutritional health of children, involving schools, parents and the community
  • School Nutrition Association: browse local school wellness policies
  • Recipe Finder: a comprehensive food database of healthy and affordable breakfast, lunch and snack ideas for your students from the USDA
Physical Activity

Physical Activity Handouts & Resources

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For Parents
For Kids

Nemours' Early Child Care Physical Activity Tools

More Resources

  • Active Start: A Statement of Physical Activity Guidelines for Children from Birth to Age 5. These guidelines are presented by developmental stage including infants, toddlers and preschoolers. (Source: National Association for Sport and Physical Education)
  • Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Active Children and Adolescents. This document offers specific physical activity plans for children and adolescents, ages 6-17. (Source: US Department of Health and Human Services, 2008)
  • CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health)
    An evidence-based, coordinated school health program designed to promote physical activity, healthy food choices and the prevention of tobacco use in children. The CATCH Programs cover kids from preschool through 8th grade and has been implemented in thousands of schools and after-school organizations across America and Canada.
  • Fitnessgram
    As part of a high quality, standards-based curriculum, this physical education tool that helps students learn how it feels to become more physically fit and how to value a physically active lifestyle.
  • Get Up and Do Something
    Aims to increase regular physical activity and improve nutritional health.
  • Take 10!®
    A program that gives all educators ideas for incorporating physical activity with academic concepts 10 minutes at a time.

Make School a Moving Experience

Information for Parents
Helpful Handouts
Related Programs

Energizers® From Be Active North Carolina, Inc.: a statewide initiative committed to empowering North Carolinians to live healthy, physically active lives.

CATCH®: Coordinated Approach to Child Health: an evidence-based, coordinated school health program designed to promote physical activity, healthy food choices, and the prevention of tobacco use in children. Understand CATCH's impact on academic achievement in the article: PASS & CATCH Improves Academic Achievement (Murray et al.).

TAKE 10!®: helps children understand the importance of fun, physical activity, and other healthful behaviors, including nutrition, while reducing sedentary behavior, improving attention, and promoting structured physical activity breaks during the school day. Learn more about this program by in the article: Ten Years of TAKE 10!®: Integrating physical activity with academic concepts in elementary school classrooms (Kibbe et al.).

Take 10! Curriculum Walk

Take 10!® Curriculum Crosswalk links TAKE 10! activities to Common Core State Standards and Delaware Content Standards. This resource can be used as a reference for incorporating physical activity into daily lesson plans, from kindergarten to grade 5.

Screen Time

Screen Time Handouts & Resources

Find resources to help kids limit media use and learn online safety.

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For Parents
For Kids

Online Safety

Grades 3-5
Grades 6-8
Grade 9-12

More Resources on Nemours’ KidsHealth in the Classroom »

More Screen Time Resources

  • Healthy Habits for TV: learn about the hazards of excessive TV watching and get ideas for alternative activities.
Sleep Routines

Sleep Routines Handouts & Resources

Teach the importance of sleep to children so they can carry good habits with them through adulthood.

Students' Sleep Discussion Questions & Activities

From our experts at Nemours' KidsHealth.org:

Behavior

Emotional Wellness Handouts & Resources

Find a list of tools and resources to promote healthy social skills, emotional wellness, and life skills.

 
Students & Social Skills

Delaware Institute for Excellence in Early Childhood (DIEEC) supports the healthy growth and development of children by providing resources and information for those who care for, who care about and who teach children and support their families.

Devereux Early Childhood Initiative (DECI) creates working partnerships among early childhood educators, mental health professionals and families to promote young children's social and emotional development, foster resilience and build skills for school success.

Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning: designed to strengthen the capacity of Head Start and child care programs to improve the social and emotional outcomes of young children.

The Equip Program: teaches youth to think and act responsibly through a peer-helping approach.

4-H Youth Development Programs: support the physical, mental and emotional health of children and adolescents, and help them lead productive lives into adulthood. Programs address such critical issues as childhood obesity, substance abuse and physical safety.

The PREPARE Curriculum: a series of 10 course-length interventions grouped into three areas: reducing aggression, reducing stress and reducing prejudice. It is designed for use with middle school and high school students and can also be adapted for use with younger students.

“Stop and Think” Social Skills Program: focused on teaching students interpersonal, problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills. The four levels ensure that all skills are taught in a developmentally-sensitive and appropriate way.

Teens Against Tobacco Use (TATU): a peer teaching tobacco prevention program sponsored by the American Lung Association.

The Adolescent Curriculum for Communication and Effective Social Skills (ACCESS) from the Walker Social Skills Curriculum: a complete program for teaching effective social skills to students at middle and high school levels.

 
Positive Relationships in School

Teacher-Student Relationships and Engagement: Conceptualizing, Measuring and Improving the Capacity of Classroom Interactions (2012)
Classrooms are complex social systems, and student-teacher relationships and interactions are also complex. The nature and quality of interactions between teachers and students are fundamental to student engagement. The quality of these interactions can be improved by providing teachers knowledge about children’s developmental processes and personalized feedback about their own interactive behaviors and cues.

The Relationship Factor: Making or Breaking Successful Transitions for Youth at Risk (2011)
Research shows that effective teachers are able to build relationships with students and implement well-developed classroom procedures. Yet most schools give little support to teachers on how to connect with students at risk. Positive relationships have particular impact on the academic success of students of low socioeconomic status and those with Hispanic and African American backgrounds.

Fostering Supportive Teacher-Child Relationships: Intervention Implementation in a State-Funded Preschool Program (2011) “Banking Time” is a set of techniques designed to promote positive, supportive relationships through 1-on-1 teacher-student interactions in order to convey sensitivity, encouragement and support. Teachers were more likely to choose to implement Banking Time with children who had lower social-emotional skills and formed a closer relationship with those children who participated.

Child temperament, Teacher-Child Interactions and Teacher-Child Relationships: A longitudinal investigation from first to third grade (2009)
The quality of children's relationships with teachers in early elementary grades has implications for their academic and behavioral outcomes in later grades. Among the findings revealed: Teachers’ perceptions of relationship quality and the number of teacher-initiated interactions in first grade predicted teachers’ perceptions of relationship quality and the number of teacher-initiated interactions in third grade.

 
Emotional Development in Students
From Nemours' KidsHealth.org
 
Teaching Self-Control
Find resources on how to teach self-control to children.
 
Healthy Literacy for Students
From Nemours' KidsHealth.org
More Resources
  • The National Health Education Standards (NHES) were developed to establish, promote and support health-enhancing behaviors for students in all grade levels from prekindergarten through grade 12. The NHES provides a framework for teachers and administrators in designing or selecting curricula, allocating instructional resources and assessing student achievement and progress.