Be Healthy School contest: Local students make being healthy easier
(May 21, 2009) - Kids say it best. Being healthy can be easy. That's why the Priority Health Cycling Team has challenged fourth grade students from across Michigan to share their ideas on how to make their classmates' lives healthier.
More than 600 students sent Priority Health their suggestions on how they and their classmates could eat healthier and be more active. Ten students were chosen as winners from across Michigan.
Winners received:
- A party! The Priority Health Cycling Team hosted a party for the winners and their classmates. Healthy snacks were served, and there were gifts and prizes for the students.
- A consultant, to help each winning school implement the Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT), a set of online tools designed to help Michigan schools create healthier environments. (Valued at $800)
- A check for $1,000 to implement the HSAT Action Plan or support gym or wellness programs.
Take a look at what some of the winners suggest
When we get to school in the summer, we should walk around the school two times. In the winter, we should walk the halls and touch the wall for times before we start school. – Darby
I was thinking that maybe I could put up informational posters all around the school. The posters can say how fitness and eating better can help your body. – Nejla
We need to eat more fruits and vegetables even though we do not like them. – Emilly
By being healthier is that in school maybe we can eat apples every afternoon. – Christine
To see which group makes the most healthy choices, we’ll have everyone keep a journal of the healthy foods they eat for a week. – Megan
Another one of my ideas to help my school stay healthy is to have a national fruit day once a year when all the students can pick their own fruit or vegetable and eat it through the day. – Allison
I would have an obstacle course; it would have to start off as a tunnel, then do 5 chin-ups. In between every station, there would be a tunnel. – Charlie
Our class can be healthier by bringing in low fat, sugarless sweets for birthday parties, holidays, and snacks. – Tyler
I could hand out flyers on what to eat and what not to eat to every kid in school. – Lucas
I told my class that I had started a team called “kick back on the track”. Every day people would walk the track, which is ¼ mile. – Katelyn
More outstanding submissions:
We can trade in desserts from our lunch so we can get fruit or vegetables in return and have little punch cards. When you get ten punches on your card, you trade it in and get fifteen extra minutes of recess to be active. – Benjamin
Get up, off that couch and start getting active! So kids and people of the earth, please, please, start getting more active! – Julia
Make a Frisbee golf course at school on the playground. – Tairyn
Tons of my other classmates and people in fourth grade will have tons more ideas. Some of them might be really good. – Paige
But if you don‘t drink milk, I am so sorry that you will not grow as stronger as the other kids who do drink milk. – Walayah
You can have strawberry milk and chocolate milk here and there but water is better. – Amanda
Do you know what they say? They say a apple a day keeps the doctor away. – Rylien
Also, for lunch time I think that parents shouldn’t pack all kinds of junk. – Megan
You know that smell on the bus, compare it to the smell of the outdoors, which would you rather smell? – Nicole
