You are about to learn many ways that you can stay healthy.  Click below to read about each healthy tip: Nutrition Exercise Shots Sleep

 

To learn great information about nutrition visit Smart-Mouth . The Center for Science in the Public Interest has great information on  nutrition for kids. The site offers  recipes, top 10 best and worst foods, suggestions for better school lunches, and eating tips.

 

Another terrific nutrition site is the Dole 5 A Day site.  It's fun and has facts about fruits and vegetables. There are even printable color sheets and puzzles. Visit the nutrition center, find the fun stuff, and more. You may also want to check out the Health Refrigerator Kids Page. Take the quiz and learn about eating in a heart health way. The Nutrition Cafe is another place where you can play games and learn about nutrition at the same time. It even has an  interactive food pryamid, a glossary of nutrition terms, and dietary guidelines.

 

If you're want to learn more about exercise you'll definitely want to check out the ThinkQuest site Bodies in Motion, Minds at Rest You'll learn about your heart rate, some basic exercises and lots more. If you like to skip, visit Skipping Games.  You'll learn chanting rhymes and lots of  skipping games.

It’s not hard to stay healthy.  You don’t have to lift 1,000 Lb (pound) weights for one hour everyday.  Here are some tips on the subject...

Nutrition

You should eat healthy.  Having a soda and chips for every meal is not what I mean.   You need to eat a balanced diet.  That means you need foods from different food groups each day. Look in this chart to see what is good to eat every day.

What if you don't know what a serving size is? This chart should answer many of your questions.

 Exercise

"Hey Jim, want to come out and play?”  

“Sorry Tom, I have to lift these weights for a whole hour!”  You’ll may never find yourself in Jim or Tom’s position, because you don’t have to lift weights all day long to be healthy.  Don’t go thinking you can watch T.V. all day either, that’s also unhealthy.  The best thing for us kids to do is to do a little stretching every morning, play outside when we can, and a bike ride on the weekends can’t hurt either.
Your heart is a muscle, and believe it or not, it is your strongest one.  But you can make it stronger.  It can’t lift weights so you have to do aerobic (air-oh-bick) exercises to make it stronger. You know when you do aerobic exercise because you usually work up a sweat.

It’s a good idea for us kids to do aerobic exercises 2 or 3 times a week for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.  Some well-known  aerobic exercises are: swimming, basketball, hockey, jogging, rowing, dancing, skipping, jump rope, and even hopscotch.  

Exercise also helps make your bones stronger! Your bones get stronger by becoming denser. If you don’t exercise,  your bones lessen in density and become weaker.

A kid's heartbeat should be between 80 and 100 BPM (beats per minute).  You can find out your BPM by counting your pulse for 10 seconds and multiplying that by 6.

Shots

Shots are also called immunizations (hard word).   I know, I know,  shots hurt, but don’t go running for cover when mom calls, “Time to get your shots.”  Without them you could get all sorts of horrid diseases.  What are in shots?  This is weird, but shots (or vaccinations) are usually Tiny pieces of a disease-causing germ.  This piece is either dead or very weak. You see, if they gave you a lot of a germ, it  would make you sick with the disease. By giving you little pieces, it makes you immune by allowing your body to produce antibodies against the disease, so you don't get it.

You need to get shots because without them you could get all sorts of horrid diseases.  Also, all schools and most camps require you to have shots so germs don’t spread between kids.

Sleep

Think of your body as a big machine working all day long.  After a hard day, your “body machine” needs to recharge.  Sleep is the recharge time.  Unlike any machine, your body never turns completely off. The brain is still sending messages and screening out unimportant noises so you don’t wake up at every cricket.  Your heart is still beating too.  It's things like these that work 24/7.  

Sleep is important to recharge your body and it's also important  for your brain.  No one is sure what the brain does when you're asleep, but some scientists think that sleep is the time when the brain sorts through and stores information, solves problems, and replaces chemicals .

If you're between the ages of 5 and 12, you need about 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night.  But it's different for everybody.  Some kids might need more sleep and some might need less.

Here are some great tips to help you catch your ZZZ’s:

• Try to go to bed at the same time each night. 

• No sodas with caffeine or hot chocolate after dinner. No pre bed TV. shows or movies.

• Playing a sport after dinner helps, but if you play to close to bedtime it won't. 

• Ahhh-- a warm bath really helps to relax you if you can't fall asleep or read.

Credits

Book

Bernstein, Joanne E. and Paul Cohen.  Dizzy Doctor Riddles. Niles, Illinois: Albert Whitman & Company. 1989.

Web Sites

The Nemours Foundation.  "KidsHealth for Kids" 1995-2004. <http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/> (January-February, 2004).

Keep Kids Health.com "Keep Kids Healthy" 1999-2003. <http://www.keepkidshealthy.com/welcome/healthyhabits.html> (January, 2004).

Images

Images of bread, berries, dairy food, chicken, sugar, stretching man, hypodermic needle,  and  sleeper from "Microsoft Office Online" <http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?cag=1> Images free for non-profit and personal use. (October-February, 2003-2004). 

Joke Answers 

Joke 1: "Quick get the toothpaste!"

Joke 2: The living room

|Healthy Tips | Herbal Medicine | Penicillin  | Vaccinations | Vitamins and Minerals|