As students get ready to enjoy summer break, remind them of the healthful habits they’ve developed during the school year by hosting a healthy end-of-year celebration.

This is a great opportunity to promote healthful habits by creating excitement around nutritious choices and physical activity at school. Parents play an important role in sustaining healthful habits at home over the summer, so be sure to include them as you make your end-of-year celebration a healthy and active one!

Here are some suggestions for how you can make sure your school’s end-of-year celebrations are healthy ones.

Eat better during end-of-year celebrations.

Whenever possible, focus on fun rather than food. However, if you plan to incorporate food into your school’s end-of-year celebration, consider trying one of these delicious snack ideas:

  • Rainbow celebration: Encourage students to bring in fruits or vegetables of their favorite color to share. Have students dress up in the same color of the fruit or vegetable that they decide to bring. Provide low-fat fruit dip, bean dip or hummus for students to enjoy with the fruits and vegetables.
  • Summer fruits taste test: It’s always great when you can tie healthful eating into learning. Teach students about fruits that are in season during summer – such as mangoes, star fruit and passion fruit – and the types of climates needed to grow them. Host a taste test with these fruits!
  • “That’s a wrap” veggie wraps: Students can create their own sandwich wraps using whole grain tortillas and fresh veggies. Students can fill their wraps with low-fat cream cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, corn, beans or other veggies of your choosing.
  • Frozen yogurt: Cool down with a refreshing frozen yogurt bar. Allow students to top their yogurt with fresh berries or dried fruits, such as banana chips or toasted coconut.

Get your classroom moving.

  • Class nature walk: Plan a nature walk either on your school campus or within your local community. Use it purely as a time to be active and socialize, or provide your students with a list of summer-related items they have to identify while walking.
  • Year-in-review relay: Create a list of questions related to topics learned throughout the school year. Create two teams and have one student from each team race to the board to answer a question and pass the “baton” (marker/chalk) to the next person in the race. Keep tally of the correctly answered questions for each team. The team with the most tallies wins the relay!

Don’t forget the gym/playground.

  • Obstacle course: Set up an obstacle course with various stations using cones for relays, jump ropes, scooters, pogo sticks and other physical activity equipment. Use the playground too, if you can! Split students into 2-4 even teams and allow them to complete the course one team at a time. The team that can complete the course in the quickest time wins!
  • Puddle jumping: Give each student a cup filled with water. Have two students turn a jump rope. One at a time (while holding their cups), players must jump into the turning rope and complete six jumps. The player with the most water left in their cup wins!

Find these activities and more at the Action for Healthy Kids website.

 

Action for Healthy Kids® is a nationwide grassroots network mobilizing school professionals, families and communities to take actions that improve school foods, nutrition education, physical activity and physical education for all students. Through funding opportunities, expert technical assistance, and our flagship program, Game On, Action for Healthy Kids supports schools in becoming healthier places where children thrive.