Tune Into Tuesday with Healthy Habits
Healthy Habits help build a strong mind and body. Our character Healthy Hippo has some tips to share for you to engage your own children in becoming more aware of healthy habits and form healthy habits of their own. They say it takes between 18 and 265 days for a habit to be formed. Probably where the ol’ cliche comes in, “Old habits are hard to break?”
If you break it down, healthy habits are formed at an early age. Fore example, brushing our teeth. We teach our children to do this two or three times a day at an early age and it becomes a daily habit. The same is true for nutrition and exercise. The older we get the more we need to practice these habit, or at least for myself. Here are some tips to form healthy habits with Healthy Hippo:
Let your child see you making healthy choices in your daily routine. This may be reading a book, magazine or newspaper or even working on a puzzle. This helps to build our mind.
Let your child see you making wise choices in your meals. From morning until the evening we should be conscious and intentional about our food choices. We all know the chart, fruits, grains, protein, vegetables and plenty of water. Your children truly watch you and want to be like you, do your best to make healthy choices. Usually a child wants to eat what you’re eating which is one way to get them to try new foods.
Let your child help you in the kitchen when they’re old enough and let them help pick out fruits and vegetables in the grocery story. Engaging them in healthy choices is important. Make it fun! For example, slicing a watermelon, pull out your cookie cutters and make shapes. Put peanut butter on celery and add some raisins for ants, get creative! There are so many ways you can engage your children in the kitchen and teach them to make healthy choices.
Let your child get outside and play! Exercise is important. You might go on walks together, have an outdoor bin handy filled with balls, chalk, kites, bug collecting things, skates, etc. Fresh air and motion are important. Take a bike ride together.
While you are working on building healthy habits for yourself or your child, remember that being creative can be fun! Paint together! Introduce your child to the arts building both fine motor and imagination. If you have young children and are working on teaching them shapes and colors, Healthy Hippo has an activity book available here. Healthy Hippo also has a social story available here. This is a fun way to introduce the character and discuss the trait. At the end of this book is a template you can cut out, laminate, put on a stick or make a necklace out of and carry this character with you at all times as a visual for your child. There are also pages for your child to write in and answer some questions that Healthy Hippo might ask.
One of our favorite books is Tune Into Good Character and stars each one of the nine Characters of Character. A fun way to introduce the character and trait again and even music! At the end of this book which is available here your child can write their own song, make their own kind of music and tune into their own character! Each character references a different musical instrument and Healthy Hippo loves to toot a horn!!
As a mom and an educator I am all for rewarding our children. Being encouraged to keep doing things and forming good character and healthy habits. Here you can print out a certificate of achievement for your child for having healthy habits! Use a reward system that best suits your child and your family. Our family had a sticker chart and we would go over it at the end of the week. If duly filled in for all the tasks during the week we would go to the video rental and our kids got to choose a movie or a game for our Friday night Family Fun! You can print out a coloring page of Healthy Hippo here and use as a sticker chart. You do what suits your family as we are all different. Keeping plenty of visual reminders is also important for a child. Plus you’re not always preaching or nagging if you will. Let’s toot our children’s horns and help them be the best they can be and to grow into their character.
TELL me and I forget, TEACH me and I remember, INVOLVE me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin