Here are January health program ideas to incorporate into your library’s overall programming strategy – brought to you by The Pulse, part of the Gale Health and Wellness Resource Center. Keep looking for us on the first of each month to find resources for three months out. Still working on fall and winter? Check out October: National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, November: American Diabetes Month, and December: Holiday and Cold Weather Safety Month
With the optimism that the New Year brings, January is the perfect time to work on creating new, healthy habits. Helping your library users set and keep New Year’s resolutions regarding their weight will be easy with these free resources and with information from Gale Health and Wellness Resource Center:
- Quick and Easy: printable coloring pages and other activities for children and handy printables for adults.
- Featured Resources: books for children and adults and links to reliable online information
- Book Club: ideas for your book discussion group
- Tie In: healthy eating and staying active story time ideas and also ideas for programs that will get kids and teens moving
- Community Resources: local agencies to contact
- Publicity Resources: free items to help you publicize Maintain a Healthy Weight Month at your library through social networking sites or traditional printed materials
- Fun Stuff: links to interactive information
Quick and Easy
Coloring Pages and Activities for Children:
- Fun With Nutrition Educational Coloring Book
- Kids on Bikes - “Eating a wide variety of foods gives us energy to work and play.”
- Kids Playing Baseball - “Eat healthful foods and stay active.”
- Kids Playing Basketball - ”Eat healthful foods and stay active.”
- Circle the Healthful Foods That You Like to Eat
- Find the Hidden Fruits and Vegetables
- Food Groups Activities
- I Can Eat a Rainbow
- Eat Well and Stay Fit family activity and information sheet in English, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Portuguese and Haitian Creole from PBS
Lesson and Activity Plans:
- Operation FitKids™ - free youth fitness curriculum from the American Council on Exercise (ACE) for grades 3-5 and grades 6-8
- Empower Me 4 Life- a fun and practical 8-session healthy living course equipping kids ages 8-12 with new attitudes, skills and knowledge about eating better and moving more — for life.
- Energize Our Community: Toolkit for Action from We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition!) a national public education program from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help prevent overweight and obesity among youth ages 8-13.
- Fast Food Fact Finding from TeacherVision “Using the Internet, children compare and contrast the nutritional value of menu items from different fast-food restaurant chains.”
Printables for Teens and Adults:
- 10 Tips for Keeping Kids Active During the Winter from Alliance for a Healthier Generation
- 20 Tips for Getting Your Family On Track from Shape-up America. Also in Spanish
- New Year’s Resolution Template in Excel
- Portion Distortion Quiz from National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
- Recipes, Sample Menus, and What’s on Your Plate? mini poster (also in Spanish) from the USDA’s Choose My Plate
Featured Resources
Books
- Books for Children: Healthy Weight through Nutrition and Exercise
- Books for Parents: Help Your Children Develop Healthy Habits
- Hot Diet and Exercise Books (Fall-Winter 2011-2012)
Reliable Online Information:
- American Council on Exercise (ACE) Get Fit
- American Dietetic Association
- American Heart Association (AHA)
- National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Aim for a Healthy Weight
- National Institutes of Health – USDA’s MyPlate
- Web MD – Exercise Workout and Fitness
Book Club
Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about Fast Food by Charles Wilson and Eric Schlosser (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006). Non-Fiction, Grades 7 to 12.
- About the Book, Discussion Questions, Activities, and Take Action! ideas from the publisher
- Book Trailer from the publisher and Transcript
- Fast Food Fact Finding activity from TeacherVision
Thin is the New Happy by Valerie Frankel (St. Martin’s Press, 2008). Biography, Adult.
From the publisher: Valerie Frankel, like most women, has spent most of her conscious life on a diet, thinking about a diet, ignoring a diet, or failing on a diet. At age eleven, her mother put Val on her first weight-loss program. As a teen, she was enrolled in Weight Watchers (for which she invented creative ditching methods). As a young woman, her world felt right only when she was able to zip a certain pair of jeans. Not wanting to pass this legacy on to her own daughters, Valerie set out to cleanse herself of her obsession. ”Thin Is the New Happy is the true story of one woman’s quest to exorcise her bad body-image demons, to uncover the truths behind what put them there, and to learn how to truly love herself. It’s a poignant, hilarious, and all-out honest account of one woman’s struggle with body image–the filter through which she’s always seen the world–and the way she ultimately overcame it.”
- About the Author
- Author’s Blog
- Look Inside the book
- Reading Guide from the publisher
- “Posing Nude to Love My Body,” an article by the author appearing in Self magazine
Born to Run: a Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)
From the publisher: “McDougall reveals the secrets of the world’s greatest distance runners–the Tarahumara Indians of Copper Canyon, Mexico–and how he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of super-athletic Americans.”
Tie In
Get Active at the Library with Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)
- Gaming for Fines
- DDR Study Break at the library
- How to Run a DDR or Guitar Hero Tournament at Your Library
- The Librarian’s Guide to Gaming from the American Library Association (ALA) – an online toolkit for building gaming at your library
Healthy Eating Story Time Fun
- The only thing more fun than The Runaway Garden by Jeffrey Schatzer is the full color Activity Guide with vegetable songs, coloring pages, activity pages, and more.
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is a story time classic. After you share the story, discuss fruit and nutrition with a Very Hungry Caterpillar Coloring Sheet, a Booklet to make and color, or Story Cards (p. 9).
Community Resources
Find a local agency to partner with, a speaker, or other local resources here:
- ACE & AARP – ACE certified professionals offering a 20% discount and free fitness consultation or group session for seniors who are members of AARP
- ACE-certified Fitness Professional Finder
- Find your local American Heart Association (AHA) chapter
- Fitness and Health Club Finder from ACE
- Become a Community Partner with the USDA/CNNP Nutrition Communicators Network
- Visiting Nurse Associations of America – Find a VNA near you to request a workplace presentation.
- Find a We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition!) program in a community near you
- Find your local YMCA
Publicity Resources
Use these free resources alongside your library’s January programming information – newsletter, blog, posters, or fliers – to promote both your library’s programs and New Year’s healthy weight resolutions.
- We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition!) a national public education program from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help prevent overweight and obesity among youth ages 8-13.
- Public Visibility Tools: Media Messages, Print and audio PSAs, Launch Prototypes, Timeline Checklist, Sample Press Release, Sample Proclamation, and more
- Complete Toolkit also available.
- Choose My Plate graphics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA):
Fun Stuff
Add some interesting and helpful interactive links to a library program, your library website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed:
Free Apps:
- BMI Calculator from USA.gov
- Calorie Counter and Meals and Exercise Journal from Everyday Health
- Y-Finder Find your local YMCA
Interactive Web Sites for Children and Teens
- Fit! an interactive website from WebMD – Junior, Kids and Teens
- Lunch-O-Matic: a Cafeteria Challenge, online game from PBS
- MyPyramid Plan for Your Preschoolers: where parents can create a customized eating plan for their preschoolers.
- Zis Boom Bah: where “It’s ok to play with your food!”
- Food and Nutrition at BAM!: where kids and teens can “separate food fact from food fiction to look good and feel fabulous.”
- Papaya Head: where parents can plan meals, enter and analyze their recipes, find recipes, and create shopping lists based on their custom profile.
- My Calorie Counter from Everyday Health
Do you have additional Maintaining a Healthy Weight programming ideas that you’d like to share? Feel free to leave a comment.
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