Encouraging Healthy Habits at Head Start: Nutrition & Hand Hygiene

Head Start Project Poster Bob Howell, Natalie Parker, Irina Melinchuk 

Project Aim: To increase the healthy habits among the Head Start students through education on nutrition and hand hygiene.For our rotation in Community Health we chose to work at the Head Start Program at Concord International Elementary. We continued last year’s project of facilitating healthy eating habits. We added a portion of health living as it  seemed proper with cold season coming up to teach the kids the importance of washing their hands.  We wanted to continue last year’s project due to one of the teachers mentioning the increase in childhood obesity in South Park and the lack of easy access to fresh produce. We planned three main  projects with the kids from demonstrating the importance of proper handwashing, to showing the kids how an apple grows from a seed to a tree that produces fruit and building an in class garden for them to possibly start growing their own fruits and vegetables in the spring. Overall, the year had some challenges with completing certain projects, but ended up being a success. We got instant feedback from the kids through their facial expressions and feedback when a few of the students were able to repeat what we taught them a couple weeks earlier.

Next Steps: Our recommendation for future student teams is that they pick projects that can build sustainability for future students to build off of. For next year to continue doing this project, but incorporate a class field trip to Marra Farms so the kids can really understand the ability to grow your own fruits and vegetables. For the head start program we want to build consistency. In order for this to happen at Concord we recommend that at the end of each quarter the students build the teachers a template of projects and information about health care that they can easily teach the kids after we’re gone. This way when UW students are not present the kids are still being taught the importance of eating healthy and healthy living. With this template it can also be passed on to future students of what the kids have been taught and they can build off previous projects and add their own recommendations to the template to continue consistent teaching. Having this consistent practice of being taught healthy choices and nutrition will help to ingrain the knowledge better.