The lessons, on teaching the student how to snack healthy, how to avoid, the JUNK snack food items, helping them make wise choices in what they want to eat when snacking, a good lesson plan these parents had, come up with, translated…
In the cramped cities, the convenience shops aren’t just the parents’ good neighbors, but also, the kids’ haven and heaven too! Although, most of us parents, disallow our young to have those unhealthy snacks too often, but we all must admit, that even us, adults can’t defend against the comforts that snacks would give to us, and if we can help the kids select a health-conscious sort of snack that’s high in quality, and teach the children to stop, look and listen before the spend, maybe, it can, help add to the knowledge of the nutrition of the children’s awareness of the snacks they consumed.
With the above understanding, a few of us, parents started discussing and designing a lesson. In reality, we can’t, bring a whole class of children into a convenience store to teach them to shop smartly, and, the easiest method would be, to duplicate a small super convenience shop in the kids’ school that they attend inside the auditorium of the schools.
First, we gathered all the volunteer parents up, to have them bring the assortments of not-yet-opened up packs of snacks, along with the jars of drinks that’d been drunk out, and we’d also had the parents sort through their homes, to find those, toy cash registers to bring to school as well, after all that’s, gathered together, then, we’d gone to the local super convenience shop to ask if we can borrow the settings from them, the pop ads, the posters, the signs, the promo stickers, etc., etc., etc., etc.
And, the duplicated version of the super convenience shop, with the unopened packs of snacks, along with the drink packs too, and we’d also, gone separately, to the super convenience shops to make our own selections of higher-quality snacks, plus the toy cash register, the items from the shop we’d borrowed from the shops, the shopping baskets, the vests for the store clerks…………oh, and also, the prerecorded the music that ushers in the customers to the shops, and, with all of these set up, the super convenience shop inside the school is ready for its———GRAND OPENING!
As the children entered into this, unexpected super convenience shop we’d set up for them at their own school, they were so very, excited and filled with awe, their eyes, ears, noses, and mouth all started, smiling. Everybody separated into their groups, and started, on their separate, shopping frenzies with the toy coins we’d handed out to them! Don’t matter if it’s real or fake (the real snacks, the empty cans of drinks………), they’d placed these items into their shopping baskets, then, headed over to the checkout counters………and then, everybody sat down, satisfactorily, to see what we bought.
The volunteer moms who’d played the roles of the store manager through the PPT shared with the children, how to snack healthily, in this easily overcome with irrationalism world of goodies and snacks that are yummy!
First, see if the package is complete? Is the food within the expiration dates?
Second key point, select the most simplified ingredients , with less listed number of ingredients. All the ingredients are listed from high contents to low, there are a ton of words we can’t understand listed in the ingredients, perhaps a ton of, chemical contents; eat the foods in their, raw form if you could, don’t have too much of the manufactured food items, that way, we’ll be able to avoid eating in too many unhealthy chemicals. And we also, need to mention the bad things about the sugary drinks too, especially on how they can’t be used to replace our meals, maybe there’s the same amount of calories, but, the nutritional values are, too separated! And also, drinking the teas, the soda, is NOT the same as drinking water; drinking the drinks isn’t healthier, after you sweat, water is best, the sports drinks have too much sugar, as well as electrolytes added in, and it’d caused our bodies to become, burdened.
Finally, the key is the nutrition labels. Do pay more attention to the “unsaturated fat” contents, so long as the items had the labels of manufactured butter, margarine, or unsaturated fats, it’s all unsaturated fats. Because our bodies can’t tell that these ingredients aren’t naturally occurring, so it would be, harder for our bodies to metabolize them. And long term accumulations of these, will cause major damages. So kids, do remember, that as you pick up the snacks off the shelves, do read the nutritional labels carefully. The unsaturated fat needed to read “0”, and best if “not-fried”, “no hydrogenated oils”, “no unsaturated fats”. And, the sodium content is also, quite important too! The various age groups have different amounts of sodium intake they needed. Having too much is bad, it would affect our health greatly.
And finally, here’s the take home point for shopping in the super convenience shops: less fried foods, less sugar, less sodium, less intake, have more of a variety of snacks, no food coloring, foods in their natural forms if you can, no additives, more vegetables.
Wow, as the children compared the packs of the snacks in their hands, they’d gone to the center of the shop, discussing the key terms we’d given to them on the packs, and, everybody discussed on how this pack of snacks is too unhealthy, while this is good, that we can try it. This drink is so sweet, or, should we select that can with less caffeine? Or maybe, with the ingredients being natural: lemon and honey………to encourage all the students to participate actively in this lesson, although all the items we’d borrowed to set up shop needed to get returned, but at the end of the lesson plans, we’d, ripped open the packages of the snacks we’d selected with care! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Screamed the school children, lined up, took out the snacks they’d selected, and were all satisfied, as they started, snacking!
Surely, this is, very effective, having the students learn, on their own, inside the too attractive super convenience shop setting, but, the ones who are too helpful, that we can’t do without, are the neighborhood super convenience shops. Back then, we’d asked all four major super convenience shops, of them, three had told us no, while, HiLife not only said yes, it’d also, lend us the uniforms of the clerks, the shopping baskets, along with the ads posted in their real stores, and allowed us to select the healthier snacks to set up for the children to consume, in the end, they’d also, given us the coupons to give us enough discounts. After the early morning activities, the homeroom instructors led the group of students out to the store next to the school to have their “field trip”, and, inside the store, the kids had the opportunities to review over what they’d been, taught about smart consumerism, and, it’d, helped them make smarter decisions in their snacks. A WIN-WIN!
Finally, in the Morning Crews of this month, we’d used the words we give to the parents from our schools as an extension of learning this lesson: “if the children can’t avoid coming into contact with the super convenience shops, and the shops are, full of, temptations, then we must, guide our young to learn, to make wise choices in the shops, to eat healthier snacks! Everybody can take the tips we give to the kids on how to select health-conscious snacks, along with the nutritional values, and the parents can use this, as a guideline for selecting the snacks they feed to their own children from here on out!
And so, this, is a very lively lesson, to bring the kids to a super convenience shop, to have them select out the healthier versions of foods that they need to eat more of, and, with the help of the store, this was, a successful lesson, because it is fun, and it has, the values of lessons that the children needed to learn about how to snack, wisely too!
Life, the Obstacle Course 