Be Well with Arielle trekked to Harlem today to teach 2nd graders at P.S. 161 how Smart and Healthy Choices = Smart and Healthy Kids!
My best friend, Joanna (otherwise known as Ms. Loewi in the classroom) is a 2nd grade teacher at P.S. 161 – Don Pedro Albizu Campos School on 133rd and Amsterdam. She’s been asking me to come into school and teach her students about healthy eating and healthy choices and today I finally made it in!
We taught them about what making a “smart choice” means and then asked them to draw their favorite healthy snack food and favorite unhealthy snack food. See below for a few examples of what they drew (i had to cover their faces and names in the photos for privacy purposes!)
We then asked what they want to be when they grow up. A few mentioned that they wanted to become firefighters, teachers, models, policemen and pilots so we spoke about the importance of nourishing their bodies with healthy ingredients so they can become these professionals who need lots of energy!
We then studied the ingredients in their favorite “fruit juice”, Sunny D (which I found out is primarily made of Water, High fructose Corn Syrup etc – UGH) and we made our own Sunny D – measuring 4 tsps of sugar, adding in some orange food coloring and water. The children made faces.
We then made the healthier, do-it-yourself option – a fresh fruit smoothie. I shlepped a blender, bunches of bright yellow bananas, fresh and frozen strawberries and pineapple Vita Coco coconut water. Voila! (Most of them said that the blender looked familiar and they have them at home so hopefully they’re enthusiam will trickle into the night and their next supermarket run with their parents/guardien.)
The students were amazed at how fruit turned into juice in the matter of 12 seconds (Mississippi seconds!) and were quite disgusted as we measured teaspoon after teaspoon of sugar into the orange food coloring.
The students LOVED helping, learning and tasting and we put the smoothie recipe handout in all of their backpacks and also included a recipe for “Smart Kid Kookies”- made with almond flour, agave and dark chocolate chips.
What a success! Can’t wait for my next Healthy Kids demo!
Be Smart. Be Creative. Be Well.
