Helping Children Develop Healthy Habits Through Fun and Play

Establishing an easy and fun health regimen keeps kids going strong

Adults influence the development of children’s healthy habits beginning in their earliest years, from the variety of foods they try, to ideas about to how to keep their bodies active and healthy. Sesame Workshop’s Healthy Habits for Life initiative offers simple strategies to help parents and caregivers instill healthy behaviors in children and ensure that they grow into strong adults.

By the time a child is between two and four years old, her eating habits are largely shaped. If she reaches the age of five without learning about healthy eating, the chances of her developing poor nutritional habits and attitudes are significantly increased. According to Dr. Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop’s vice president of outreach and educational practices, the key messages about healthy living are not easily available to children.

“This may be the first generation that may actually have a shorter lifespan than their parents, all due to issues around obesity or facts about nutrition and the amount of physical activity,” Betancourt says.

Addressing the need for nutrition and exercise education

Fortunately, there’s a window of opportunity during a child’s preschool years in which her early social environment can impact the development of healthy habits. This is the point in a child’s life where information provided by Sesame Workshop can have a big impact, Betancourt explains.

“The focus was not on intervention but on prevention, and that’s where our biggest assets are,” she says. Research shows that through repeated exposure and with the help of positive role models, preschoolers can learn to like wholesome foods and can develop good dietary practices. Betancourt believed Sesame Workshop, and particularly Sesame Street, can play a powerful role in modeling these healthy habits so that young children along with the meaningful adults in their lives can easily use and understand.

The answer to this pressing need came in 2004, when Sesame Workshop launched the Healthy Habits for Life initiative. The project seeks to establish an early foundation of healthy habits, while reminding children and their adult caregivers that living a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be a chore -- it can be fun! Healthy Habits integrated this sense of fun and play into children’s daily lives in a way that’s singular to the Sesame Workshop approach, and is also practical, developmentally appropriate, and culturally relevant.

Helping parents and teachers instill healthy habits

Elmo (Get Healthy Now Show)

It’s often a challenge for teachers to fit a health and fitness curriculum into an already packed day where more traditional academic topics are often the primary focus.

“It’s a tricky topic, I think, for teachers to know how to include in their curriculum … there’s a lot of conflicting information out there about what really is healthy, and it seems that that information is changing all the time, ” says Leslie Feldt, a curriculum specialist at Sesame Workshop.

She explains that the Workshop conducted a lot of research before developing comprehensive materials that did a lot of the heavy lifting for teachers, reducing their burden of struggling to keep up with the latest information on healthy habits.

Kids are responding too. Healthy Habits for Life materials are all available online, including games that allow children to dance along with Zoe, eat healthy foods – or “anytime foods” -- with Cookie Monster, and brush their teeth with Elmo. Coloring pages and activities can be printed out to help reinforce healthy living habits. Storybooks give parents a tool to use when they talk to kids about food, exercise, and hygiene choices.

The project succeeds because it offers children:  

• Sesame Street Muppets who model fun ways to move and play
• Encouragement to explore and enjoy healthy foods
• Opportunities to build self-confidence and feel good about themselves
• Fun and age-appropriate ways to grow up healthy, strong, and happy

Rocío Galarza, director of outreach and content design, confirms that the project has been a success so far.

“The feedback has been really, really positive,” she says. “We apply for conferences every year – one of the conferences asked us to give the Healthy Habits workshop again this year because it was so useful and because they think the materials are so helpful.”



Funding Partners

Kids Health and Nemours Health and Prevention Services
Earth's Best Organic