Healthy Bones Action Week
3rd – 10th August, 2014
Activity ideas for ECEC services
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Healthy Bones Action Week is run from 3 -10 August, 2014. This year’s theme is Stronger Together,
encouraging people to take 3 easy steps together to become stronger.
Step 1: Increase daily serves of calcium to meet the recommendations
Step 2: Go for a walk or do regular exercise
Step 3: Spend time outdoors to get more Vitamin D.
The Dietary Guidelines for Children and Adolescents in Australia recommends:
Children over two years: are served ‘reduced-fat’ varieties of dairy where possible. Reduced-fat
dairy varieties contain similar levels of calcium and protein but contain less saturated fat and
therefore are less energy dense. Children over two years are eating a broader range of food that
contributes to the overall fat and kilojoule intake and therefore do not need this from dairy
sources.
Children under two years: Milk is a major source of energy for children under two years of age and
therefore reduced-fat varieties are not encouraged for this age group. Full-cream milk should be
served to children under two as they are in a rapid period of growth and require the high energy
and nutrients of full cream milk and dairy products.
What this means for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Services:
Healthy Bones Week is a good time to review your nutrition policy, menus and the amount and
type of dairy you serve. It is recommended that children have 1½-2 servings of dairy per day, with
half of these servings being catered for whilst children are in care. An example of one serve of
dairy would be a cup of milk, 3/4 cups of yogurt or 2 slices of cheese.
Are you offering reduced-fat varieties to those children over the age of 2? If not is this a small
change you could make at your ECEC.
As an ECEC educator, you can educate parents on these recommendations. Places where you can
find this information include:
Your Munch & Move Manual and factsheets
Get up and Grow resources
Our ‘Reduced Fat Milk Resource’ for Munch & Move.
Some interesting bone facts to discuss with the children:
Eating enough calcium rich foods such as milk, yoghurt and cheese is important
for your bones to grow, to be strong and healthy and also to have healthy teeth.
As a child and a teenager, your bones are continually growing in length and size
- your bones are growing right now!
Milk and water are the best drinks for healthy bones.
Playing games that involve hopping, dancing, skipping, running and jumping are
all excellent for you bones.
Without bones you would just be a blob of organs and skin!
The human skeleton is made up of 206 bones, including bones of the:
Skull - including the jaw bone
Spine - all vertebrae, sacrum and tailbone
Chest - ribs and breastbone
Arms - shoulder blades, collar bone
Hands - wrist bones, fingers
Pelvis - hip bones
Legs - thigh bone, kneecap, shin bone
Feet - ankle bones, toes
Useful websites:
www.healthybones.com.au
www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bharticles.nsf/pages/calcium
www.dairy.edu.au
Healthy Bones Action Week
3rd – 10th August, 2014
Activity ideas for ECEC services
Physical Activity Ideas
All physical activity for children is beneficial. When talking about building bone density, activities
such as hopping, jumping, skipping, running and hopping are great, so why not try games that
focus on these fundamental movement skills.
Simple games such as hopscotch, skipping over ropes/hoops/relays using different types of
movements etc. Discuss with children what bones they would be using with each different
movement.
Leap frog games: Set up a variety of different coloured hoops on the ground. Have a dice or
spinner with different colours. Spin the spinner or roll the dice and then the children need
to jump in that coloured hoop. See how many jumps the children can do in the different
coloured hoops. To vary, children can jump like different animals e.g. frogs, rabbits.
Run a fun mini ‘Building Bones Boot camp’ with the children. Have different stations such
as step ups, star jumps, running on the spot, jumping over obstacles, bunny hops,
balancing on beams, hopping activities.
Pick one bone and discuss what physical activities use this bone i.e. running and jumping
uses the thigh/leg bones, throwing uses the arm and hand bones.
Craft Ideas
Find a picture of a skeleton and help the children label the major bones. You can use an
animal or human skeleton. You may also like to use a photo of the children in your group.
Get families to bring in all their dairy packaging and use these in the construction area. Talk to
children about the journey of milk from the cow to the bottles at the shop and together with
the children build the milk processing plant or something similar.
Use dairy packaging to create a hanging garden/herb garden e.g. yoghurt containers, milk
cartons etc.
Using the attached skeletons, make a bones lotto game, where the children can match the
bones to the skeleton.
Trace around children’s bodies on butcher’s paper and ask children to draw in the different
bones they have learnt about.
Ask children to bring in old milk cartons/bottles and decorate them to make a game of skittles
Do any of the parents at your ECEC work in the medical profession? If you have any doctors,
nurses or radiographers see if they could come in and talk to your children about the body
and bones and maybe they could bring in some x-rays to show the children, this will stimulate
some great discussion about the body!
Song ideas
Try singing this old and fun song about your bones with the children – it’s a fun way for children to
learn about the different bones. It can be a great rainy day activity.
Dem dry bones
Your toe bone’s connected to your foot bone, Your foot bone’s connected to you ankle bone,
Your ankle bone’s connected to your leg bone, Your leg bone’s connected to your knee bone,
Your knee bone’s connected to your thigh bone, Your thigh bone’s connected to your hip bone
Your hip bone’s connected to your back bone, Your back bone’s connected to your shoulder bone
Your shoulder bone’s connected to your neck bone, Your neck bone’s connected to your head
bone, Oh those bones oh those bones, Oh those skeleton bones, Gonna walk around
You can then sing the song in reverse from the head bone all the way down to the toe bone.
Healthy Eating Ideas
For healthy bones week the service could provide a special dairy week menu and create some
fun names for lunch and snacks – e.g. Charlie cheese cubes, cheesy submarine, Millie/Molly
milkshake, Yasmin yoghurt. The children could come up with some great names!
If children bring in their own food encourage parents to pack dairy snacks and lunch e.g.
yoghurt tub (suggest parents could freeze the night before so the yoghurt is cold for lunch),
cheese and lettuce sandwiches, yoghurt dip with vegetable sticks, cheese cubes with wholemeal crackers
Parents could bring in their favourite healthy dairy recipe which could be shared with other
families – smoothies, yoghurt dips and healthy savoury muffins are all great ideas.
For other great recipe ideas go to:
www.dairyaustralia.com.au or www.freshforkids.com.au