Teaching Healthy Habits
Healthy Hippo is one of nine animal characters created by Joni to help teach nine core values to our children and our youth. Habits are made when we do things often and with intention. Try to make teaching fun and engage your children in activities, conversations, lessons, stories and be a role model. They need a role model to look up to that they can trust and most likely they will want to be like you! Make good choices because believe it or not, they are watching and listening to you, your conversations and your reactions. Our character Healthy Hippo teaches a child that a healthy mind is as important as a healthy body, feed them both!
TRUE STORY: When I taught preschool, I had parents thank me for this character and the simplicity to encourage their children to form healthy habits. One mom shared that she had difficulty getting her son to brush his teeth until she shared that Healthy Hippo says to brush your teeth at least two times a day! I had another mom reach out and share that her two children, a son and a daughter had difficulty making healthy snack choices until she brought Healthy Hippo into the conversation and shared the choices that this character made. In the photo above was a visit to a preschool with Healthy Hippo and the children were showing off their muscles because they had healthy habits!
Healthy Hippo suggests some healthy habits for your body:
Hygiene: Brushing your teeth twice a day, bathing daily and washing your hands often.
Nutrition: Eat breakfast, eat fruits, vegetables, protein, grains and choose healthy snacks. Keep healthy snacks and foods readily available to help make better choices. Take your kids grocery shopping and help choose healthy foods.
Hydrate: Drink plenty of water and avoid soda and sugary drinks.
Physical play: Get outdoors when you can and breath in the fresh air, walk, dance, bike, hop, skip and jump, move your body often. Plant a garden and enjoy the harvest!
Rest: Get plenty of sleep, it rests your body and your mind.
Healthy Hippo suggest some healthy habits for your mind:
Engage and Encourage: Puzzles, reading, painting, writing, playing, singing, and conversing to expand their mind.Read with your child every single day, even if it’s labels on a product, reading builds better vocabulary and helps with communication skills. When you introduce a new food, activity or place, make a word wall and add it to that as a visual.
Cook: Make healthy snacks and meals together, introduce your children to new foods. Be creative! For example, on a celery stick put peanut butter on it, place raisins and pretend they are marching ants, so many fun and creative ways to introduce healthy foods to your children
Make it fun: Be creative in teaching and engaging your children in activities, stories, cooking, etc.
Limit screen time: Have a favorite movie or series to watch, but don’t make it priority or get lazy in front of the TV
Here is a Certificate of Achievement for having healthy habits!
Once you introduce this character, Healthy Hippo, engage your children in stories we have published and activities, like the paper bag puppet above! Click here for your print out to make a paper bag puppet of Healthy Hippo! If you’d like to introduce your child(ren) to Healthy Hippo, check out “Let’s Be Healthy” starring Healthy Hippo on Amazon A fun tip is that at the end of each of our “Let’s Be” books is a template of the character. Tear it out, laminate if you’d like, glue on card stock for more durability if you’d like. Then, carry this character with you wherever you go to remind your child to have Healthy Habits. You could glue it on a ruler and say, “Healthy Habits rule” or put it on a Popsicle stick and keep it handy. Visual reminders are powerful tools when teaching and reinforcing anything to your children. Healthy Hippo has a story titled, I Am Healthy Hippo, Come Learn With Me for ages 0-5 which includes the alphabet and the letters to spell out the character. Plus, two different Healthy Hippo characters! Shape Up With Healthy Hippo can be found here to teach colors and shapes.We love sharing and we’d love to hear from you!!