Activity Idea: Recharge Your Batteries

While childhood health has always been a hot topic, recently the topic has gotten even more attention particularly with First Lady Obama's "Let's Move" initiative to combat childhood obesity. Teacher QuickSource® offers many ideas and activities that make it easy to incorporate physical health into your daily lessons and classroom.


So why is physical health so important early childhood education? Preschool QuickSource® reminds us that "young children learn best when they have healthy minds and bodies." Planning activities that involve fine and gross motor development and good nutrition can promote a child's physical health and development.

Here's a fun activity called Recharge Your Batteries to try that teaches children to recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods and how healthy foods make their bodies grow. For this activity, you will need: a small vehicle or flashlight that uses a battery, a food pyramid chart, plastic food representing healthy and unhealthy foods.


Let's get started!

1. Show the children the vehicle (or flashlight) that is used and how it works.

2. Remove the battery from the item. Show the children that now it does not work because it does not have any energy to make it work.

3. Explain that our bodies are very similar to the vehicle (or flashlight). If we don't put healthy food in our body, it will act like the battery has been removed and we will have no energy.

4. Using the food pyramid and the plastic food, show the children healthy and unhealthy foods and help them determine in which group each food would belong.

5. Encourage the children to make good choices to keep their batteries charged.


If using POCET™, this activity correlates to Developmental Guide: PH5 Demonstrates Independence in Hygiene and Nutrition (page 58).


Use storytime to supplement this activity and build your students' understanding of healthy foods. Encourage the children to think about and talk about foods they like to eat. Are they healthy or unhealth?

How was this activity? What other materials/items have you found that also work for this activity?


For more developmentally-appropriate activities, visit Teacher QuickSsource® and browse through all age areas, including Preschool, Kindergarten, Infant, Toddler, and Head Start. Don't forget to explore activities promoting environmental awareness at Environmental QuickSource®, too!