Lesson

How Can a fit-check Help Kids' Moods?

Teach kids to think about how their energy and mood affect their food and move choices.

Home Units Be Mindful About Healthy Choices How Can a fit-Check Help Kids' Moods?

Objectives

  • Recognize mood and recharge as influencers of fit choices.
  • Describe the fit-check as "checking recharge and mood before making a choice."

Lesson Plan

Being fit is not just about what you eat or drink or how you move. Being fit is about having enough energy and motivation to make healthy nutrition and physical activity choices. Four key factors of well-being help you to be fit:

  • Mood: Motivate Your Mood
  • Food: Think Your Food
  • Recharge: Recharge Your Energy
  • Move: Move Your Body

The lessons in this unit help students connect the four parts of fit with everyday choices by teaching them how to do a fit-check. A fit-check is a tool for the moments when a child needs to make a choice. Your students will learn to be mindful and stop to think about their energy and mood before making a choice—then decide the best choice, the fit choice!

Set The Stage

Have kids turn and talk with a friend and discuss how their bodies feel after recess. Do they have more energy or less energy after playing? List some of the adjectives that kids use to describe how their bodies feel after playing. 
 

To use this with your students click here.

Captivate

Think About Your Energy Levels

Have fun reading the slides aloud! Read them slowly and quickly depending upon whether they refer to low or high energy.

Ask students to share times and places when they felt too tired and/or lazy to be active.
 

Educate

Check Your Energy and Your Mood

Key Points:

  • When you are tired or bored, you sometimes make choices without thinking about influencers like energy or mood.
  • When you stop and think about your energy and mood before you make a choice, you are doing a fit-check!
  • A fit-check helps you to make the best choice.

Check for understanding: Why do a fit-check?

Activate

Think About Your Energy and Mood

Ask students to do a fit-check (stop and think about their energy and mood) at the beginning of their next recess.

Close the Lesson

Today we learned that it is important to stop and think about your energy and your mood when you make a choice. In the next lesson we will learn how a fit-check can help you to make healthy choices.

Grade: 3-5

Time: 20 Minutes

What You'll Need

Resources
Materials
  • Markers
  • Poster Board or White Board
  • Slideshow

Health Education Standards

  • Standard 1: Core Concepts - Use self-control and impulse-control strategies to promote health. 
  • Standard 2: Analyze Influences 
  • Standard 4: Interpersonal Communication 
  • Standard 5: Decision-Making

 

Social and Emotional Learning Competencies

  • Self-Awareness
  • Self-Management
  • Responsible Decision-Making

Extend the Lesson

Related Content

Food, Mood, Move, Recharge

Be Mindful About Healthy Choices

Learn what a fit-check is and how this tool can help kids make healthy choices. Kids will also learn how to be mindful about their choices.

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Be Mindful of Your Mood and Energy

Read the slides slowly and quickly depending upon whether they refer to low or high energy.

Start Slideshow
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Stop and Think

Think about how a fit-check leads to better decisions.

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Helping Kids Make Healthy Choices

Introduce healthy behaviors as choices we make. When kids have a framework for thinking about healthy choices, it empowers them.

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Make Healthy Choices Throughout Your Day

Think about the daily choices the two characters make throughout their day.

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Do the fit Thing

This song has a bouncy beat and teaches kids about how to "do the fit thing" by making good choices, like drinking water and eating healthy foods.

Play Song