BULLETIN BOARD IDEAS CHAPTER 6 BULLETIN BOARD IDEAS Bulletin board displays are a great way to keep children engaged in conversations about nutrition and fitness outside of the activities you use to teach them about health. If you have a bulletin board close to where children eat their snacks, this would be a perfect place to remind them about healthy eating habits. Boards may contain components designed by children, and they can also be made interactive to encourage children to problem solve and think about nutrition in different ways. Whether you leave the display up for a week or a month, you can also keep the children’s attention by making little changes on a daily or weekly basis to challenge them. Here are some ideas about how you can use the bulletin boards in your program to create an environment that promotes healthy habits. The pictures in the examples are just suggestions on how you can set up your board, be creative and adapt the board suggestions to what works best for your program. You may also want to start up a bulletin board project to follow up on some of the Get Healthy Now activities. Here are a few suggestions for follow up bulletin board uses: BB-1: Building A Healthy Me This might be an overall Get Healthy Now bulletin board, following several activities and making connections between them, or as a review. BB-2: Food From Around The World Any Food Group activity (Name That Food Group, It’s about Variety, Fruit and Vegetable Rainbow, Great Vegetable Hunt, etc.) BB-3: Good Health is Always In Season Fruit and Vegetable activities, also Food Group activities. Fruit and Vegetable activities BB-4: Color Me Healthy (Fruit and Vegetable Rainbow, Great Vegetable Hunt, Good As Art, etc.) Smart Choices activities on serving sizes BB-5: Serve It Up BB-6: Boggled (Bet You Can’t Eat Just One, What’s Your Serving, My Measuring Cup, Serving Size Chase) Any Food Group activity, or Healthy Snack activities (Healthy Snack Game, Snack Sleuths, Bowling for Snacks, etc.) BB-7: Dear Valentine Fitness Fun activities that address cardiovascular fitness BB-7: Guess Who? Many Fitness Fun activities As you do Get Healthy Now activities, other possible bulletin board ideas may occur to you. Any display resulting from your activities, such as a food label collection, bean mosaics, advertisements for fruits and vegetables, or other illustrations, may serve as an everyday reminder to choose more healthy behaviors. Bulletin Board Ideas BB-1, Page 1 233 BB-1: Building A Healthy Me THEME: What kind of things can you do to build a healthy body? BUILD: 1. Fold several pieces of paper in half to make top and bottom sections. 2. On the top, glue a picture of a part of the body or a state of wellness (teeth, muscles, heart, eyes, brain, hair, bones, having energy to play) 3. On the bottom, write a healthy habit that children can do to keep these things healthy or avoid illness. 4. Challenge children to name other things they can do. 5. As time goes on, alternate pictures or add children’s suggestions to the list of healthy habits. Picture Suggestion Chart Healthy Habits Find Pictures Showing Brushing teeth, rinsing mouth, drinking milk Teeth Physical activity, drinking water Muscles Physical activity, eat whole grains Heart Eating dark green or deep orange vegetables Eyes Eating a healthy breakfast Brain Eating healthy proteins Hair Washing hands, rinsing food, wiping food surfaces Keeping Germs Away Eating foods with calcium and dark leafy greens Bones Sleeping, eating whole grains, drinking water Having Energy To Play DISCUSS: What are the many ways in which a healthy diet and active lifestyle promote good health? (See bulletin board BB-1 examples on page 234) Bulletin Board Ideas 234 BB-1, Page 2 Bulletin Board Ideas BB-2, Page 1 235 BB-2: Food From Around The World THEME: Where do different foods come from and how are they used? BUILD: 1. Create or purchase a map of the world. 2. Place pictures and/or words of different foods around the edges of the map. 3. Staple pieces of yarn to the foods on either side of world map and tie the other end to a pushpin. 4. Have children use the pushpins to indicate where they think the foods are from. 5. Let the children write their choices down and turn them in. 6. At the end of each week tell the children the correct answers and put up new foods for the following week. Food Origins Chart Europe Broccoli Afghanistan Carrots * China Pasta * North America Central America South America Turkey Corn Fortune Cookies Hard Taco Shells Pumpkin Cranberries Corn Lima Beans Cashews Avocado Tomatoes * Peppers Peanuts Asia Middle East Africa Carrots * Peaches Pasta * Bananas Plantains Black Pepper Eggplant * Dates Figs Cheese Lentils Pistachios Okra Watermelon India The Andes Eggplant * Tomatoes * originating in * Foods more than one area Bulletin Board Ideas 236 DISCUSS: 1. Where do foods come from and how do different cultures use them? Example: Taco shells and fortune cookies are actually American inventions and Marco Polo brought noodles to Italy from his journey to China. 2. Have children bring in recipes from home and talk about where their family’s traditional meals come from. BB-2, Page 2 Bulletin Board Ideas BB-3, Page 1 237 BB-3: Good Health Is Always In Season THEME: Seasonal and Holiday Foods BUILD: Make a board for the first week of each season with pictures of fruits and vegetables that are in season as well as any traditional foods that are served during that season’s holidays. Spring Fruits & Vegetables Artichokes Asparagus Avocados Carrots Collard Greens Rhubarb Holidays with Passover Easter Shavuot Purim St. Patrick’s Day Cinco De Mayo Traditional Foods Matzoh Lamb Kugel Gefilte Fish Corned Beef &Cabbage Mole/Salsa Summer Fruits & Vegetables Apricots Berries Corn Summer Squash Peaches Plums Green Beans Watermelon Holidays with 4th of July Junteenth Bastille Day Memorial Day Traditional Foods Watermelon Greens/Okra &Biscuits Beignets Hamburgers & Corn on the Cob Fall / Autumn Fruits & Vegetables Apples Grapes Eggplant Sweet Potatoes Okra Bell Peppers Yams Pumpkin Holidays with Rosh Hashanah Thanksgiving Dia De Los Muertos Halloween Diwali Indigenous Peoples Day Traditional Foods Challah Turkey/Pumpkin Pie Pan Dulce Candy Lentil Vegetable Stew Corn/Succotash Bulletin Board Ideas BB-3, Page 2 238 Winter Fruits & Vegetables Dates Grapefruit Oranges Pears Yams Wild Mushrooms Broccoli Holidays with Chanukah Christmas Kwanzaa Chinese New Year Eid ul-Fitr Traditional Foods Latkes Turkey/Goose Black Eyed Peas Moon Cakes Baklava DISCUSS: 1. What it means for a fruit or vegetable to be in season (the time of the year that a food is harvested and more available). 2. Where do we get foods when they are out of season (preserved by freezing, drying, or canning, or shipped from other parts of America or other countries like Chile). 3. Spend some time pointing out and talking about the new fruits and vegetables available for the season. 4. Discuss traditional foods for various holidays around the world. Bulletin Board Ideas BB-4, Page 1 239 BB-4: Color Me Healthy THEME: How different colored fruits and vegetables help keep you healthy. BUILD: 1. Create a black outline of a peacock-like bird. 2. Invite children to cut out pictures of colorful fruits and vegetables from magazines and grocery store flyers (with their caregiver’s help) at home. 3. Have children bring them in and put them on the appropriate peacock feather. 4. At the end of the week you’ll soon have a beautiful bird that is the picture of health! DISCUSS: Invite children to describe the pictures they bring in and discuss the fruits and vegetables the children have never tried before and would like to try as a snack. Bulletin Board Ideas 240 BB-4, Page 2 Bulletin Board Ideas BB-5, Page 1 241 BB-5: Serve It Up THEME: What is the correct serving size for each given food? BUILD: 1. Fold several pieces of paper in half. 2. On the outside, glue a picture of food. 3. On the inside, write down what one serving of the food is. 4. Invite children to guess the serving sizes of all the foods on the board and to check if they guessed correctly. 5. Every day or week (depending how long you want to use the board) put up new pictures of food and their serving sizes to keep children engaged. Serving Size Chart Food Correct Serving Size Chopped/sliced fruits or vegetables 1/2 of a cup Pieces of round fruit size of your fist (small banana) Pasta, beans, or rice 1/2 of a cup Bread one slice Juice 3/4 of a cup (6 oz.) Nuts or Pretzels handful (1 oz.) Leafy Greens one cup Meat/Fish deck of cards (3 oz.) DISCUSS: 1. Which serving sizes did the children get wrong? 2. When they snack, do they pay attention to how much they are eating? (See bulletin board BB-1 examples on page 242) Bulletin Board Ideas 242 BB-5, Page 2 Bulletin Board Ideas BB-6, Page 1 243 BB-6: Boggled! THEME: Food Group Combinations Just like the popular game Boggle, this board teaches skills in finding combinations. Children learn to create healthy snack combinations when given specific food groups to choose from. After an activity or discussion about food groups and meal or snack planning, set up this Boggle board. BUILD: 1. Start with two sheets of paper and list two combinations of the following five food groups: Dairy, Meat & Protein, Grains, Fruits, and Vegetables. One combination on one sheet and the other combination on the second sheet. 2. There are a total of ten possible combinations: Meat & Protein Grain Vegetables Meat & Protein Grain Fruit Meat & Protein Grain Dairy Meat & Protein Vegetables Dairy Meat & Protein Vegetables Fruit Meat & Protein Fruit Dairy Vegetables Grain Fruit Vegetables Grain Dairy Vegetables Fruit Dairy Fruit Dairy Grain 3. Every week (or day, depending on how long you use the board) put up two new Boggle squares with a different food group combination from the list. 4. Leave out paper plates on which children can draw or write a meal or snack that is based on the Boggle food group combination. 5. Post a few of the children’s plates around each Boggle square. 6. You may want to add the Food Group Cards to your board to help the children think of combinations. 7. Are there any other popular board games you can adapt to your board? DISCUSS: 1. Different combinations of food groups. 2. The difference between fruits and vegetables. Definitions provided by Wikipedia.com will help children understand why some foods they think are vegetables are really fruits. Bulletin Board Ideas 244 “The word "vegetable" is a culinary term, not a botanical term. The word "fruit" on the other hand can be a culinary term or a botanical term, and these two usages are quite different. Botanically speaking, fruits are fleshy reproductive organs of plants, the ripened ovaries containing one or many seeds. Thus, many botanical fruits are not edible at all, and some are actually extremely poisonous. In a culinary sense however, the word "fruit" is only applied to those botanical fruits which are edible, and which are considered to be a sweet or dessert food such as strawberries, peaches, plums, etc. In contrast to this, a number of edible botanical fruits, including the tomato, the eggplant, and the bell pepper are not considered to be a sweet or dessert food, are not routinely used with sugar, but instead are almost always used as part of a savory dish, and are salted. This is the reason that they are labeled as "vegetables". Thus a plant part may scientifically be referred to as a "fruit", even though it is used in cooking or food preparation as a vegetable. The question "The tomato: is it a fruit, or is it a vegetable?" found its way into the United States Supreme Court in 1893. The court ruled unanimously in Nix vs. Hedden that a tomato is correctly identified as, and thus taxed as, a vegetable, for the purposes of the 1883 Tariff Act on imported produce. The court did acknowledge however that botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit.” For complete definitions and more information on fruits and vegetables go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable 3. Invite children to talk about traditional meals their family eats and the food groups that are in them. BB-6, Page 2 Bulletin Board Ideas BB-7, Page 1 245 BB-7: Dear Valentine THEME: How to take care of your heart muscle BUILD: 1. For February, have children write valentines to their heart about how they will take care of it. 2. Have them start their valentines with, “Dear heart, I promise to take care of you by…” 3. Have children post their valentines on the board. DISCUSS: Simple ways to take care of your heart: • Keep moving! Do a cardiovascular activity for 20 minutes three to five times a week • Don’t smoke • Don’t eat a lot of fried foods • Eat whole grains every day • Eat at least five fruits and vegetables every day 1 3 5 4 2 10 8 6 7 9 Bulletin Board Ideas 246 BB-7, Page 2 Bulletin Board Ideas BB-8, Page 1 247 BB-8: Guess Who? THEME: Children’s favorite physical activities BUILD: 1. After an activity or discussion about the importance of physical activity, have children draw their favorite activity on half a sheet of paper. 2. Then have them fold it in half and write their name on the inside. 3. When you post all of the activities on the board, encourage children to look at the pictures and guess who drew them. 4. They can open the pictures to find out if they guessed correctly. DISCUSS: 1. Are there any activities that some of the children have never tried? 2. Invite children to describe to each other why the activity they drew is their favorite. 3. Invite children to discuss activities they would like to try but have never had the chance. Bulletin Board Ideas 248 BB-8, Page 2