health

A Fun App for Introducing Kids to Health Foods

November 23, 2015 by admin

Space Chef is a fun iPad app from the Lawrence Hall of Science. The purpose of the app is to introduce students to healthy foods and recipes that they may not have ever tried or even heard about.

Space Chef features a fast-paced game in which students have to quickly grab the ingredients for a recipe. The ingredients scroll past them in three streams or flight paths. Students are shown a recipe at the top of the screen and they must grab the appropriate ingredients as they stream across the screen.

Playing Space Chef could be a great way for students to be introduced to new and healthy foods. The game is suitable for elementary and middle school students. To follow up the game play, ask your students to explore what makes these foods healthy. Another follow-up to the game play is to ask your students to think about the snacks that they could take out of their diets and replace with healthier options.

Veggie Bottoms – An Interactive Story About Fruits and Vegetables

February 25, 2014 by admin

Veggie Bottoms is a cute interactive story designed to teach students about fruits and vegetables. On each page of the story students learn about the characteristics and health benefits of a new vegetable or fruit. Students can manipulate the image of each fruit and vegetable in the app. For example, on the page about peas students open the pea pod. Each image talks to students too.

Veggies Bottoms could be a good app to use as part of an elementary school lesson about healthy food choices. Veggie Bottoms currently costs $0.99.

The Human Body – An Anatomy App for Kids

September 23, 2013 by admin

The Human Body by Tinybop is an iPad app designed to help elementary and middle school students learn human anatomy. The app features interactive diagrams of the major systems of the human body. A few of the things that students can see on the app are how lungs breathe, the heart beats, and the ears hear. One of the features that I liked is that through the app students will also see how the feeling of a touch of the hand is received in the brain. Students can turn layers and labels on and off throughout the app.

Tinybop offers a free PDF handbook to go along with The Human Body app. The handbook provides more information about the things featured in the app as well as activity and discussion prompts for teachers.

The Human Body App provides an option for parents to create accounts to monitor how their children use the app. Parents can authorize an in-app purchase to add kidneys, bladders and genitals to the app (by default that information is not enabled).

An iOS Game to Get Kids to Try Healthy Foods

June 13, 2013 by admin

Chew or Die is a free iOS app that encourages people to try new healthy foods. The free app contains a series of healthy food challenges. The challenges include things like removing bread and potato-based starches with rice, trying a new vegetable, removing meat from your diet for a week, and sneaking more fiber into your diet. When you try a challenge take a picture of the food that you try and upload it to Chew or Die to challenge your friends to match your healthy choice. Watch the video below to see the app in action.

Kids Learn About Healthy Snacks on Healthy Heroes

May 13, 2013 by admin

Healthy Heroes is a free iPad app designed to help children learn about healthy snacks and meals. In the free app students feed healthy foods to a friendly monster. Before each activity students are shown a few healthy foods and they’re told a bit about the nutrition and calories of the foods. Then in the activity students tap mystery boxes to find the snacks and drag them to the monster’s mouth. Between each activity a short, healthy eating tip is played for students to watch.