concordance maestro

heckeldarla63

Hey guys! If you follow my fb page you know last week I had the opportunity to talk to a bunch of kids (ages 8-14) about eating healthy and exercising.

I have to send a thank you to a friend of mine, Laura, who works for the company CIGNA, where I spoke. She mentioned me to her boss about being the key speaker for the event and after a few emails back and forth it was booked.

Let me start off by telling you.. I am no teacher. I have to thank one of my other friends, Chrissy, who is a 3rd grade teacher and I asked her to give me some pointers on what?s too in depth and what?s not. Seriously, while I was doing some research there were websites that said to talk to them about complex carbs. Really? Some adults don?t even know what those are.. Anyways, I give you all (teachers) props. BUT, I do know about health and fitness and I have had to be a leader in several aspects in my life so I wasn?t too terribly nervous about it.

I was set up in a big conference room.

And soon the kids piled in. Overall there were just under 150 kids but they were broken down into age groups 8, 9, 10 etc up to 14. I honestly thought I?d have a hard time with the little ones but they were so into it; I l.o.v.e.d. it! The rowdy bunch ended up being the 12 year olds.

I started off talking about my job, why nutrition is important and the different options you should eat for breakfast, lunch, after school snacks, and dinner. I won?t get too in-depth with you here. Who knows, maybe I?ll be speaking in front of you sometime

I showed them the new plate from the USDA website:

Explaining how our plates should look and where to get these foods. I also provided hand outs of the different food groups to show what a serving size looks like.

(source)

As well as a handout of some examples of foods in the different groups.

(Disclaimer: I did not make this above sheet but I can?t remember the website where I found it.)

As a fun activity, I had them circle a few of their favorites in each food group and then we created a well-balanced, healthy meal by looking at both sheets and their favorite foods!

Then I talked about the importance of exercise and how easy it is to get in the recommended amount daily.

And lastly, we finished off with a word search I created online using this website. I made two kinds ? one with different sports and exercises and the other with different healthy foods.

Total blast! The kids learned a ton, and I gained more experience talking in front of people.. Hey, kids or not, you have to be well-rounded in all aspects of your job