Your approaches to teaching kids about health don’t have to be over complicated. Instilling healthy choices and healthy decision making can be as simple as encouraging kids with fun and relatable storybooks or making small adjustments to their current daily routine. Whatever your choice, doing it together as a family is key.
Through helpful habits, daily hygiene, or exciting activity plans, parents or teachers can teach kids about health that will instill lifelong benefits. Try the top three tips below for how to teach your kids about health, then find the best health books for kids to start your family health journey today!
Create an exciting physical activity plan
It’s no secret that kids are always on the move. Their curious minds are always pulling them towards the next thing to discover. Encouraging them to stay active seems a simple task, but it’s essential to instill support, form, and safety at this stage of their life, too. Kid-friendly physical activities that include important elements of endurance, strength, speed, agility, and flexibility can help your young ones avoid injury while having fun.
Encourage activities that include warmups and cool downs and teach them the importance of hydration while exercising, as well. Playing with your kids while you teach them these important physical health lessons will also help you have fun as a family and form family bonds.
Teach them about mental wellness with regular emotional check-ins
Mental wellness is just as important as physical wellness, so it’s important to start these lessons early with your kids, too. Children can develop strong fears and anxieties and can even experience emotional hardship that could lead to mental health disorders as they develop. Whether your child is experiencing strong phobias, signs of separation anxiety, or other panic episodes, having regular emotional check-ins can encourage them to talk to you or a professional about their issues.
Talk to your child regularly about their feelings and try to create a safe and comfortable space for them to share without judgment. Let them know that fear, anxiety, sadness, or their other big feelings are neither good nor bad and they are allowed to feel those things sometimes. Ask if there is anything you can do to help and that it’s okay if they don’t know. Starting this conversation around emotions and mental wellness is the first step in establishing trust and support in your relationship with your child.
Keep them engaged with fun, yet educational reading material
Studies show that even infants can start making key brain connections like language and literacy building and social and emotional skills when parents read to them. A great way to teach kids about health, life, and personal hygiene - all while keeping their growing minds engaged - is with relatable and educational health books for kids.
When teaching children about healthy habits and personal hygiene, consider the children’s health book series Doctoroo, by Dr. Rachel Wellner. This fun and relatable character engages preschool through grade school level children by exploring real-world health issues. Kids follow along through exciting challenges and root for the main character as she utilizes creative problem-solving skills, all while they learn important insights into health and wellness.
To find out how Doctoroo children’s health books are changing the way kids, families, and classrooms are engaging with health, visit our Media Page.