Course Information
The purpose of this class is to prepare children to live healthy lifestyle and free of diseases as they adopt healthy behavioral changes, develop new eating habits, and improve their self-esteem and image.
By using arts and other creative art forms, students will be engaged in creative activities, including collages, journal writing, painting, drawing, poetry, and theater. Students will be encouraged to express their thoughts through arts, reflections and discussions in order to analyze their personal values, learn about healthy food and adopt new eating habits.
Class Description: This is a basic nutrition class, where students will learn about the relationship between food and health. Students will gain knowledge about making the right food choices.
This program is recommended for kids that are obese, have a tendency to be overweight, as well as for all these who want to learn how to eat and stay healthy.
An important element is to keep parents involved while students are taking this class. Teacher could pass out articles for at home discussions. Parents will be expected to monitor children’s progress and encourage healthy habits as they try to eat and cook healthy meals Methods:
The instructor will provide different exercises such as diagrams and crosswords as well as art activities in every class. The learning material will be presented in an interesting and exciting way in order for students to enjoy and learn at the same time. All activities will be related to the main purpose of the class – to gain basic nutrition knowledge, to establish a relationship between food, health, and disease, and how food choices can influence our physical and emotional well being.
Students will be given in class art assignments and small homeworks for building healthy eating and living.
The program is new and original in two directions:
Using expressive arts as natural play to learn fast and have fun.
Support from the parents to help reach our goal – a healthy lifestyle.
Class Topics:
- The food pyramid “Steps to healthier you”
- Healthy food – vitamins and minerals in food
- Junk food and how to stay away from it
- Food and health – anatomy and nutrition
- Food additives and diseases
- Nutrition and physical activities
- Safety when storing and cooking food
- How to use arts to increase self-esteem
- How to use arts to learn easy and fast
About the Program Author:
Margarita Ivanova holds a Bachelor’s Degree of Art in Psychology from DePaul University. Her area of expertise is behavioral management for building healthy eating and habits. She is the founder of the school program “How to foster behavior modifications among children to build healthy eating patterns by using expressive arts”. She has studied and researched obesity, school food programs and how to protect children from obesity by changing their behavior. Those studies have guided her to develop a completely new, innovative idea, where children learn their thoughts, feelings and emotions about food by playing and using expressive arts. As they progress, they develop a new role model and make positive changes in their own behavior.
Margarita Ivanova studied also behavioral management for emotional eating and obesity problems with adults. During her research and externship’s program ,she created a weight-loss course for adults: “Love your self”.