Stuffed Characters Teach Nutrition to a Pre-K Class

According to the KENTUCKY DEPARTMENT FOR PUBLIC HEALTH, Kentucky’s childhood obesity rate is 35.3%, the 6th highest in the nation.

The teacher for a Pre-K classroom at Christ’s Kids Learning Center contacted the Boyd County Nutrition Education Program Assistant and requested a series of lessons using the Organ Annie and The Organ Wise Guys program. The goal was to teach students about how eating healthy foods affects the organs in their bodies and how their bodies work.  Each week the organ characters would be shown to the students as a reinforcement to their learning.  By the end of the lesson series, 71% of the students could name all the organs and how they helped their bodies.  

Since the series was held in the fall, for the week of Halloween the character of Peter Pancreas stressed the importance of not eating a lot of Halloween candy which would make him work harder.  During the next lesson, two students commented they did not trick or treat as much as usual so that they wouldn’t make Peter Pancreas work harder.

Another seasonal activity included having students glue cotton swabs onto paper skeletons representing the bones in their bodies.  Several of the students asked for 206 cotton swabs to glue on their skeletons because Calci M. Bone had taught them that they have 206 bones in their bodies.