Healthy Heart Crafts for Children

Encouraging healthy living for a lifetime starts with children. The ideas are endless to help promote a strong heart and active lifestyle through fun craft projects. There are many resources available to help create fun games and fitness activities for children to use as hands-on projects. Keep in mind that the more senses children use --- sight, smell, touch --- the greater the chance that they will commit the information to memory.

Food Models

• Save the packaging from healthy grain products for young children to play with.

  Purchase inexpensive toy food models that include fruits and vegetables. Save containers from healthy foods, such as oatmeal, quinoa and cereal boxes, for children to play with. This is a project that can be adapted to any age group. Small children can use these products in a play kitchen, while older students might use them to design mock, healthy meals. Young children will be visually exposed to healthy foods while pretending to cook. Older students can compare nutrition fact labels and make lists of carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals. They can compare foods to find the ones that are low in fat, sugar and sodium. This will also require saving food packaging from items like cookies, cake mixes and ice cream, in addition to healthy, whole grain sources.

Colorful Plate

• Heart-healthy crafts can be inexpensive.

  For this project you will need construction paper in five different colors cut into strips about 1 inch wide by 4 inches long, as well as paper plates, crayons or markers and glue sticks. Use one color for vegetables, one for fruit, one for grains, one for dairy and one for the protein group. Review ideas for each food group with the students, and then have them list several individual foods on the colored paper strips. The students then arrange the strips on the paper plate to design different meal plans that contain one strip from each food group. The strips can be stored in a plastic baggie or the children can glue them on the plate as a take-home project. This activity will help encourage children to pick healthy foods from a variety of sources, providing a full range of nutrients.

Heart Anatomy and Fitness

• Encourage a variety of food choices with children.

  Have young children color an outline of a human heart. Older children can label the different chambers of the heart and their functions. If a stethoscope is available, have children listen to their own heartbeat. Discuss the importance of fitness and have them complete exercises listed on the Presidential Physical Fitness site, such as curl-ups, pull-ups and the V-sit reaches. Consider completing the entire Fitness Challenge. Guidelines and tips can be obtained through the website.

Internet Games

• Fitness is a part of maintaining a healthy heart.

  The United States Department of Agriculture has a health section for kids with a blast-off game, coloring pages and classroom activities. The First School website provides healthy kids activities centered around learning subjects, such as colors, math and spelling. It also offers seasonal, holiday and gardening projects. The Kids Health website offers fun quizzes, word search games, healthy recipes just for kids and games such as Mission Nutrition. It also offers an informational section for parents and for teens.