Lesson Plans
Healthy Routines in the Classroom

Your classroom works well because you have set daily routines for your students to follow: circle time, snack time, free play inside or outside,show and tell, etc. Children like to know what is happening next, so routines make them feel safe. Routines for healthy eating, sleeping, and physical activity can help students form healthy habits that will last a lifetime.

The Building Blocks program materials and website provide resources, tools, and activities to help you promote healthy habits for your students. Here’s an easy-to-use, annotated index of lesson plans for you to easily adapt to your classroom. Have fun!

Importance of Sleep

• Sleep and Energy
  Purpose: To help students see the connections among getting enough sleep, having energy, and having a good day at school.
  
  • Building Blocks’ Materials:
    • Know Kit Cards (3- to 4-year-olds) (PDF 1.75BM) provide questions and activity suggestions to help your students expand their thinking and practice making decisions. (Card #3—Alia sleep on the soccer field.)
    • Character Cards (PDF 686KB) introduce your students to the interests of the friends. (Ali kicking the soccer ball.)
    • My Building Blocks Sleep Diary Handout (PDF 1.24MB) provides a chart to track your students’ sleep habits throughout the week .

Healthy Eating Lesson Plans

• Obesity and Making Healthy Food Choices
  Purpose: To help students recognize and appreciate the diversity in foods and discover new healthy snacks.

• Building Blocks Activity Book (PDF 2.03MB): “Healthy Snacks” (page 6 for ages 3–4 and page 18 for ages 5–6) provides information on how to make sure your children’s snacks are healthful.
• Music: “Healthy Snacks” lets your students know just what they should and shouldn’t eat to stay healthy and alert.
• Game: Favorite Snacks Memory Game introduces your students to healthy snacks.
  
  
• Building Blocks and Healthy Snacks
  Purpose: To use songs, games, and activities to make students aware of sweet treat alternatives.
  
  
• Modeling Good Eating
  Purpose: To help students become healthy eating role models by identifying,classifying, and choosing a more healthful diet.
  
• Handout: The Smart Choices (PDF 4.95MB) handouts help your students see a wide ranch of healthy foods.
  
  
• Size-Wise: Healthy Eating Habits
  Purpose: To introduce students to the concept of fractions (halves and fourths) as they divide portions or pictures of food and talk about how much we need to eat.
  
• Handout: The Size-Wise Pizza handout (PDF 446KB) provides students an opportunity to understand food sizes or portions of foods.

Physical Fitness Lesson Plans

• Tracking Physical Fitness
  Purpose: To help students see the value of regular, sustained exercise in increasing their physical fitness and developing strength,endurance, and flexibility.

• Handout: The Fitness Tracker Chart handout (PDF 149KB) allows students to track their daily physicalactivities.

• The Modelof Fitness
  Purpose: To help students get fit, feel good about their bodies, and make good physical activity part of their routine.

• Building Blocks Activity Book: “Power Positive” (PDF 4.63MB) (page 8 for 3- to 4-year-olds and page 20 for 5- to 6-year-olds) provides an opportunity for your students to keep track of new skills learned.
• Music: “Power Positive” helps your students understand that self-confidence is important to their mental and physical well-being.
• Handout: The Daily Exercise Chart guides students to keep track of the ways in which, and how often, they exercise each day.

Resources
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Let’s Move! is a comprehensive initiative, launched by First Lady Michelle Obama, dedicated to solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation, so that children born today will grow up healthier and able to pursue their dreams. This initiative provides parents helpful information and tools to foster environments that support healthy choices.

We Can! Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity &Nutrition is a national movement campaign that provides parents with resources and tools to help children stay at a healthy weight.

SLEEP Journal
“Sleep, Learning, and the Developing Brain: Early-to-Bed as a Healthy and Wise Choice for School Aged Children” (PDF 211KB) talks about the importance of sleep for normal health,development, and academic performance of children.

National Institutesof Health
“Shape Your Family’s Habits” suggests ways to encourage healthy habits in eating and physical activity and describes the importance of caregivers in shaping those habits.

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