Learning Context/ Introduction
Univera Healthcare’s Fun 2B Fit program was created by the Center for Better Health. The center is designed to develop and implement community health initiatives that improve the health and quality of life for residents of Western New York. Univera Healthcare’s award-winning 2Smart 2Start youth smoking prevention program is also a product of the Center for Better Health and currently has more than 114,000 Western New York students participating.
Objective
Univera Healthcare’s Fun 2B Fit program is a school-based initiative focused on increasing physical activity and making healthy food choices for students and their families to combat the developing childhood obesity problem. It is based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
Recommendations
The CDC strategies to increase physical activity include parental involvement, role modeling, pedometers, and consistent healthy messages. The AAP recommends calculating and plotting body mass index in children, encouraging parents/caregivers to promote healthy eating patterns by offering nutritious snacks and modeling behavior by making healthy food choices for themselves, routinely promoting physical activity, including unstructured play at home and school. It also recommends limitation of TV and video time to a maximum of two hours per day.
Program Elements
The Fun 2B Fit program is targeted for 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade students and their parent(s). Below is a description of the program elements for each of the grades:
2nd Grade
Second graders will participate in Fun 2B Fit taste testing in which they will sample one healthy Fun 2B Fit recipe each week for 12 weeks at their school. Students are encouraged to try the foods offered. Each week students will receive a laminated recipe card to take home so they can make the recipe with their family. The recipes include breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack foods that are popular with kids, including “Fruity French Toast”, “Lean & Lively Lunches,” “Tangy & Terrific Taco Dip and Tacos,” and “Banana Oatmeal Cookies.” Schools can then offer the “Fun 2B Fit” items at lunch and promote the recipes to parents in their school, or district newsletter. The parents will already know the children have tried these items and will have the nutritional information about them at home on their recipe cards. In art class, students will create a decorated recipe box from a shoe box to store their healthy recipe cards for future use.
NOTE: There is a brief pre and post test.
Below are listed the 12 recipes:
Banana Oatmeal CookiesCasseroleCracker SnacksFruity French ToastLean and LivelyMac and CheesePizzaShepherd's PieSmoothieTacosTrail MixUn-fried Chicken
2nd Grade Extension
Listed below are additional Ethnic recipes participating families can use at home:
Greek-Shish KabobItalian-Bean and Macaroni SoupItalian-Minestrone SoupItalian-Spaghetti with Turkey Meat SauceItalian-Summer Vegetable SpaghettiOriental-Oriental RiceOriental-Stir-fried Beef and Vegetables
3rd Grade
Third grade students will participate in a 45-minute program including a physical activity lesson entitled “Why it’s Fun 2B Fit.” Students and teachers, along with Fun 2B Fit staff and fitness instructors from Body Shaping By Sandy will engage in a “workout” developed especially for kids that incorporates easy, fun dance moves and stretches. During the workout, students are taught the various muscles of the body and their function, and discuss the importance of physical activity and how it can be made fun and easy to do at home with family members. We then ask them to go home and teach their parents, grandparents, siblings or friends the Fun 2B Fit “workout.”
NOTE: There is a brief pre and post test
4th Grade
The fourth grade Fun 2B Fit component involves an interactive ”field trip” to a local Wegmans store for the student and their parents. The “Eat Well. Live Well.” Tour is a two-hour tour of Wegmans based on the Food Guide Pyramid. The tour is intended to be the first step in developing good eating habits by introducing children to a variety of healthful foods in a fun and interactive way. The ‘Eat Well. Live Well.” curriculum allows children to see and taste nutritious and tasty foods while reinforcing math, social studies, and science lessons for the typical fourth-grader.
Parents
The parents of all children participating in Fun 2B Fit receive a parent tool kit that contains pedometers for the family to encourage increased physical activity, a magnet with everyday tips on how parents can keep their kids healthy, a healthy family pledge to be signed and displayed in the home, a magnetic grocery pad for the refrigerator with healthy food choices pre-printed on each tear-off page, and other tips and information on how to encourage physical activity and healthy eating. Representatives from the Fun 2B Fit program will be presenting at participating schools’ PTA meetings to inform parents their children will be participating in the program.
NOTE: There is a brief pre and post assessment on the health habits of you and your children.
Results
The Fun 2B Fit program is being offered to select schools in the Western New York area after a successful pilot program was conducted earlier this year. The 12-week Fun 2B Fit pilot program survey results show that children who participated with Fun 2B Fit began eating more fruits and vegetables, and became more concerned about being fit in general in comparison to before they completed the program. They also played more with their parents.
Please Note
All materials are property of Univera Healthcare 2005.
Materials and Resources
Healthy Family Pledge - PDF
Healthy Activity Planner - PDF Cover
Healthy Activity Planner - PDF Inner Pages
Stopwatch Activity Card
Contact Univera
For more information or to request program materials, please contact:
Email: Fun2Bfit.WNY@univerahealthcare.com
Telephone: (716) 857-6312
