Live: Happy Shopping

Objective: To help children understand that fruit can be healthy snacks. The game also trains the children’s jumping skill.

Time: 30 minutes

Materials: A music CD, paper bricks, soft mattresses, fruit models, shopping bags and fresh fruits.

Let’s GO!

1. Warm-up exercise: Tell children a story. Take the lead and ask them to simulate the action of picking fruit.
   
   
2. Game:
   
   
   1. Ask the children to pick up a fruit model at the starting point, and then jump over the paper bricks, run back to the starting point and put the fruit model into the shopping bag.
      
      
   2. After the game, children count the number of fruit models in the shopping bag.
      
      
3. Cool-down exercise: everybody strolls.
   
   
4. Teatime: Children have fruit refreshments. The teacher explains the benefits of eating fruits.

Games to Develop Endurance

1. Train confidence:

   The amusing games help children manage the skills of running and abrupt stopping. As they have been trained to hurdle over the paper bricks before, they look confident in the exercise.

    

2. Identify the smells of fruits:

   Quite a lot of children confuse the smell of lemons with that of oranges. Therefore, the teacher asks children to smell the fruit and explore its shapes at teatime for a better understanding of fruit.

    

3. Take on new challenges:

   For children who are familiar with running, jumping and walking over a balanced beam, they are particularly enthusiastic when being asked to overcome new challenges like crawling across the tunnel and bypassing the traffic cones.

Stage 3: Sharing Platform

Ms. Ma Man Ki , Teacher

• The school has successfully extended the project to family level; as such, families are now more aware of the benefits of vegetables and fruit, and are more eager to support the cause. Some parents prepare unusual fruits for their children in sharing sessions so that pupils are introduced to more fruits.
  
  
• Life-based learning is important. Our teaching materials should be adapted from children’s life experience in order to stimulate their learning motive. For example, we first aroused their curiosity in the activity ‘smell the fruit’ and then they became interested in fruit.

Ms. Chan Shuk Mui , Teacher

• Children usually have fruit already sliced by their mothers; they never have the chance to see what fruit looks like with peel or seeds. In the project, we encouraged children to try different fruits and conducted thematic activities. We also showed children how to dice fruit so that they could view fruits through their cross-section. They learnt what was inside a fruit and what its structure was. Besides, we encouraged them to try fruits which they had never seen so that they understood them better.

Ms. Leung Hoi Sum , Teacher

• What impressed me most in the workshop was when the dietitian showed a model of fats. I knew that people store fats inside their body, yet I had never imagined them to take up a volume of as much as 5 pounds in total. Besides, the instructor taught us how to calculate our optimal daily intake of energy. We now know how to maintain an appropriate meal portion. I have also learnt that eggs are regarded as meat; if a meal contains eggs, it should contain a reduced amount of meat.

Parent Blog

Ms. Tsui Lin Ho:

• The school has given us an abundant amount of resources, such as the ‘Fruit Diary Card’ of the Joyful Fruit Day. My kid asks me for stickers as reward for eating fruit. We both enjoyed the activity.

Ms. Lee Chi Ling:

• Teachers did not teach fruit-related nutrition at school in the past, so my daughter was not bothered to try fruit. After this project, she is more willing to try new fruits like kiwi fruit, watermelons and pears. Once she finds a fruit delicious, she will eat it again and again.

Ms. Cheng Chau Har:

• The teachers encouraged my daughter to eat fruits which she had never tried. She found them delicious and asked me to buy some next time.

Conclusion

Many parents think it is an unruly behaviour among kids to resist fruit. In fact, this is just an instinctive reaction against new food. The StartSmart@school.hk Pilot Project had a positive effect on kids as regards fruit-eating; they got a better understanding of the smell, the taste and other characteristics of fruits than before. Their attitude towards fruit has changed from defensive to agreeable. The project has contributed a lot to children’s well-being, and it should go on.