How Can a Choice-Check Help Kids' Moods?

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 choice-check. A choice-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! Print and display the fit Wellness Posters to help them be mindful of healthy choices they can make throughout the day.

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.

Think About Your Energy Levels

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

Ask students to share times and places when their energy was low and they didn't feel like being active.

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 choice-check!
• A choice-check helps you to make a healthy decision.

 Check for understanding: Why do a choice-check?

Think About Your Energy and Mood

Ask students to do a choice-check before their next recess. Remind them to stop and think about their energy and mood, then decide what healthy choice they can make.

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 choice-check can help you to make healthy choices.