Having a healthy body and mind starts with feeding it with good information. Teaching students how to take care of themselves physically and emotionally is one of the most important tasks teachers have. In this post, I share teaching resources and links to help you with your next health and nutrition cross curricular unit.

Book Suggestions for Health and Nutrition

I recently discovered a series of books by Steve Smallman. They are fractured fairytales with a health focus. They would be so fun to share with your students and use as mentor texts for this unit. Here are the titles if you’d like to check them out:

In Eat Your Greens Goldilocks, Goldilocks runs through the forest. Before long, she is lost and tired and her tummy is rumbling. She wishes she’d eaten her breakfast.
Then she smells something yummy! She follows her nose to a little cottage. No one is home, so she goes inside. Does she eat their greens? You’ll have to read to find out!

In Give Us a Smile, Cinderella, poor Cinderella is never allowed a bath. It’s no surprise that she’s so smelly! When the fairy godmother conjures up a bubble bath, Cinderella is transformed, just in time for the ball. This one is perfect for hygiene.

In Keep Running, Gingerbread Man! no one can keep up with the speedy biscuit. Only Fox is fit enough to stand a chance of a teatime treat. But the Gingerbread Man’s not just quick on his feet. He’s pretty quick-witted too. After outsmarting Fox, he leads the other characters in an aerobics class. Give this one a try when you talk about exercise.

Finally, in Blow Your Nose, Big Bad Wolf!, the three little pigs learn a lesson about spreading germs. When they won’t lend the wolf a tissue, their houses are blown down by his sneezes! And to make matters worse, they then catch his cold.

Health and Nutrition Teaching Resources

First up are the freebies I liked from Teachers Pay Teachers. I Can Fill Up My Plate! is a freebie from Loreen Leedy using the book, Jack and the Hungry Giant. It teaches portion control and the importance of eating from all food groups. Certainly, this is an important part of a healthy body unit.

Move Your Body by Christine Reeve would be a great resource to use in conjunction with the book, Keep Running Big Bad Wolf!. It is an exercise chart that you might use to model the importance of keeping your heart healthy. You may this organizer with the book too.

This morning, we just had a training on sensory integration and the importance of using a sensory diet to help children improve their focus in school. This unit encourages that, and you might find this Brain Breaks Pinterest board helpful too. [Here] is the link to it.

Craft Ideas for a Healthy Me Unit

I think as we approach Thanksgiving, this is a great activity. Kids take a food pyramid and sort the foods that many will be eating for their Thanksgiving dinners. Boy, we all love the sweet potatoes and stuffing, but everything in moderation. (and I’m working hard at it at the moment….sigh).

I love this cute idea from Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten. It works well with teaching plants, but how about putting the craftivity with a writing prompt about trying new veggies and fruits. Sometimes giving kids construction paper, a scissors, and glue, and letting them use their imaginations to create their veggie people could lead to creative projects.

One more cute project before I go… I love this one about fighting germs from Mrs. Saylor’s Blog which has since been discontinued. I think reading The Big Bad Wolf story I mentioned earlier or Bear Feels Sick in conjunction with the project would work well.