Activities

The following activities are from the Growing up healthy and deadly education book.

They have been uploaded onto the VACCHO website so that you can download and print the PDF pictures needed for each of the activities.

How much sugar is in that drink?

Download the PDF pictures here.

Aim:

Raise awareness about the benefits of drinking water and the amount of sugar hidden in different drinks.

What you’ll need:

Instructions:

Print two copies of the ‘drinks and sugar content’ cards. One copy will be for the children to play with, and the other copy is so you have the answers.
Take one set of the cards and cut them in half down the middle, so that you have separated the drinks from the sugar content.
Shuffle the cards around so they are all mixed up.
Place the drink pictures and the sugar content pictures on the floor in piles next to each other.
Ask the children to put the cards back together, based on how much sugar they think is in each drink.
Go through the answers with the children, putting the correct drink pictures next to the correct sugar content pictures.
As a group, have a discussion about why water is healthy and why sugary drinks are unhealthy.

Download the PDF pictures here

Aim:

Grain (cereal) foods, mostly wholegrain (e.g. bread, roll, wraps, rice, pasta, crackers)
Vegies or salad (e.g. carrot sticks, small corn cob, lettuce and cucumber in a sandwich)
Fruit (e.g. fresh, tinned fruit in natural juice, a small amount of dried fruit)
Milk, yoghurt, cheese and plant based alternatives
Lean meat/protein foods (e.g. tuna, boiled egg, bean mix, sliced chicken breast)

What you’ll need:

Instructions:

Divide the children into two groups and give each group an empty lunch box photo, sticky notes and pens.
Ask both groups to place their empty lunch box photo on a table, the floor or use blue tac to stick to a wall / whiteboard (where all the children in the group can clearly see it).
Arrange the food pictures on the other side of the room, ensuring that there is a safe, unobstructed area for children to walk from the lunch box photo to the food pictures.
Display the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Guide to Healthy Eating.
Tell the groups that they will be choosing a food picture (one person from each team to collect a food picture at a time) and placing it in the lunch box to create a healthy lunch box. Tell the children to walk to collect a food piece as quickly (and safely!) as they can.
Tell the children that they can draw/write the food on a sticky note and stick the sticky note to the lunch box if the food they have in mind is not one of the food pictures provided.
Remind children that a healthy lunch box needs to have a food/drink from each of the five food groups and include a bottle of tap water. Tap water is best because it has no sugar and the fluoride in it helps to strengthen teeth.
When the groups feels that they have created a lunch box with healthy foods they can yell out, ‘Healthy, deadly lunch box!’

Once a group has yelled out, ‘Healthy, deadly lunch box!’, facilitate a group discussion:

Does the lunch box have foods/drinks from all five food groups?
How could these foods be prepared ahead of time and/or made in bulk (e.g. cutting up carrot sticks and keeping in a plastic container of cold water in the fridge – changing the water each day, grating carrot and cheese and keeping in the fridge, making a fruit salad, pouring bean mix into small containers, hard boiling eggs)?
How could you keep the foods in the lunch box cool until lunch time? (e.g. freeze a bottle of water overnight and pop it in the lunch box in the morning; freeze the yoghurt and it will defrost by lunch time; pack an ice brick/pack in the lunch box. Ask the group for their ideas!)
What are your healthy lunch box tips?