Handouts, Tools and Activities

Caring for Our Children — National Health and Safety Performance Standards (3rd ed): Caring for Our Children, 3rd Edition (CFOC3) are national guidelines for ECE programs and contain more than 600 standards which represent the best evidence-based expertise and experience on quality child care health and safety practices and policies.

The CDC Worksite Health ScoreCard (PDF): A tool designed to help employers assess whether they have implemented evidence-based health promotion interventions or strategies in their worksites to prevent heart disease, stroke and related conditions.

Deskercise — 33 Ways to Exercise at Work: Workday exercises the cubicle-bound can do everyday to be healthier and happier

Latex Reactions In Child Care: American Latex Allergy Association article about latex gloves or other products made with latex and what to do if an adult or child reacts to latex products

Let’s Go! Healthy Workplaces Toolkit: The “5,2,1, None” message provides a great starting point for workplaces that are new to wellness promotion and strengthens the efforts of workplaces with existing wellness activities.

Preventing the Flu: Information for Pregnant Women Working in Education and Child Care Settings: Information and recommendations from the CDC for workplace H1N1 influenza infection control and prevention strategies related to pregnant women who work in education and child care

Taking Care of Ourselves — Stress and Relaxation: These Head Start resources — posters, bookmarks, relaxation exercises and self-guided booklets — can help staff and parents find ways to cope with stress.

Workplace Health Model (JPG): A visual representation from the CDC of how workplace health programs should flow — from assessment, to planning and management, to implementation, and finally, evaluation. Perfect to use as a slide during trainings.

 

Preventing Back Injuries

Back Injury Prevention for Childcare Providers: Back injury prevention strategies from the Department of Defense child care center

Childcare Provider Back Injuries: Description and prevention strategies of the most common contributing factors to back injuries and how they might correspond with typical childcare job duties

 

Research

Role Stress as a Contributor to Burnout in Child Care Professionals Boyd and Pasley (1989): This study was designed to determine whether role ambiguity or role conflict best explained the variance in the level of burnout experienced by 85 full-time employed child care professionals.

When Child Care Teachers Become Parents Claffey et al (1995): This study examines the conflicts arising from the child care teacher’s dual role as employee and parent.

Physical Activity in Child Care Centers: Do Teachers Hold the Key to the Playground? Copeland, Kendeigh, Saelens, Kalkwarf and Sherman (2012): In order to determine what childcare teachers/providers perceived as benefits and barriers to children’s physical activity in childcare centers, this study conducted nine focus groups and 13 one-on-one interviews with 49 childcare teachers/providers in Cincinnati, OH.

Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnel and Breckler (2000): A survey was conducted with 196 randomly selected family day care providers and child care center workers residing in the state of Maryland. Measured were job demands, job control and job resources.

Impact of a Worksite Wellness Program on the Nutrition and Physical Activity Environment of Child Care Centers Gosliner, James, Yancey, Ritchie, Studer and Crawford (2008): The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of adding a worksite wellness program to a health education and policy development project to determine the effects on child care providers and their program environment.

Adult Health in Child Care: Health Status, Behaviors and Concerns of Teachers, Directors and Family Child Care Providers Gratz and Claffey (1996): The results of a statewide survey of health status, behaviors, and concerns of randomly selected early childhood professionals from the Child Care Employee Project

Self-Reported Depression in Nonfamilial Caregivers: Prevalence and Associations With Caregiver Behavior in Child Care Settings Hamre and Pianta (2004): This study describes the prevalence of self-reported depressive symptoms in a sample of 1,217 nonfamilial caregivers and examines the relation between depression and the quality of interactions between caregivers and young children.

Ergonomic Recommendations and Their Impact on Child Care Workers’ Health King, Gratz and Kleiner (2006): The purpose of this study was to determine the impact ergonomics has had on the occurrence of musculoskeletal symptoms and injuries among child care workers.

Predictors of Job Satisfaction, Job Stress and Job Commitment in Family Day Care Kontos and Riessen (1993): Almost 400 family daycare providers responded to a questionnaire examining three aspects of a family daycare provider’s job attitudes (job stress, satisfaction, and commitment) as they relate to providers’ personal characteristics, program characteristics and child-rearing preferences.

Multiple Correlates of Burnout in Child Care Workers  Manlove (1993): Hierarchical multiple regression was used in this study to assess the extent to which personality (neuroticism, extraversion), background characteristics (education/training, work experience), and perceptions of the work setting (conflict, ambiguity, organizational commitment, job satisfaction) were associated with three facets of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment).

Sources of Stress and Burnout in Professional Child Care Work  Mattingly (1977): Analyzes major stress-producing components of professional clinical child care and describes some aspects of the widespread “burnout” phenomenon.

Nutrition-Related Knowledge, Attitudes and Dietary Behaviors Among Head Start Teachers in Texas: A Cross-Sectional Study Sharma, Dortch, Byrd-Williams, Truxillio, Rahman, Gulshan, Bonsu and Hoelscher (2013): This study is one of the first to describe the nutrition-related attitudes and behaviors of Head Start teachers, who are responsible for educating children at increased risk for obesity.

The Physical and Mental Health of Head Start Staff: The Pennsylvania Head Start Staff Wellness Survey Whitaker, Becker, Herman and Gooze (2012): The objective of this study was to compare the physical and mental health of women working in Pennsylvania Head Start programs with the health of US women who have similar socio-demographic characteristics.

 

 

Trainings

Stress Reduction Workshop: This PowerPoint presentation, handouts and tools from Head Start can be used with staff and/or families to teach techniques to reduce stress.

 

Staff Wellness in Early Care and Education

Staff Wellness in ECE – PowerPoint 1: This PowerPoint presentation covers barriers to staff wellness and identifies strategies for addressing wellness as part of a comprehensive obesity prevention strategy in ECE programs. The presentation also includes trainer notes on the importance of ECE staff wellness.

Staff Wellness in ECE – PowerPoint 2: This PowerPoint presentation covers nutrition, physical activity and screen time best practices for adults. Barriers to staff wellness and strategies for addressing wellness as part of a comprehensive obesity prevention strategy for ECE programs are covered. Also includes trainer notes and group activities.

Staff Wellness Handout – How Can I Manage Stress?: This tip sheet can be used when training ECE staff as part of an activity or as a resource related to staff wellness.

Staff Wellness Handout – Turn Off the TV: This tip sheet can be used when training ECE staff as part of an activity or as a resource related to staff wellness.

Activity – Staff Wellness in ECE, Self-Assessment: This activity is designed to get ECE staff thinking (individually or in groups) about their current wellness activities and habits. They are also guided to think about improvements they can make at home or on the job to support their own wellness.

Activity – Staff Wellness in ECE, Program Planning: This grid can be used as part of an activity to get ECE teams thinking about program-wide improvements they could make to improve staff wellness at their program.

Resource List – Staff Wellness: This document highlights publicly available resources on staff and/or worksite wellness. It can be used as a handout and reference guide during ECE training on staff wellness.

Handout – Staff Wellness in ECE, Taking Care of Yourself: This document provides information to support staff wellness: including questions to think about, guides for physical activity, nutrition recommendations and stress relievers. Suitable for training or as a resource to individuals or programs.

The Department of Public Health (DPH) and partners Georgia SHAPE and HealthMPowers, Inc., developed Growing Fit. The program promotes healthy behaviors among young children aged 0-5 through policy development, in efforts to establish healthy habits that can carry into all life stages. Early care educators are trained and provided with technical assistance in developing nutrition and physical activity wellness policies. These wellness policies use best practices to create a standard for early care educators. In addition, wellness policies work to support a healthy environment for Georgia’s early care centers.

The Growing Fit Kit contains:

• Explanation of the importance of a wellness policy
• Self-assessment tool to evaluate current policies and practices
• Success stories from other early care settings
• Healthy eating and physical activity resources
• Planning document with suggestions and examples for writing the policy

This educational learning experience features:

• Growing Fit Kit: Wellness Policies in Georgia’s Early Care Environment
• Package of items including music and books about nutrition
• DECAL approved CEU course

The kit has a step-by-step guide for wellness policy development; they call it the ABC’s of Wellness Policies:

1. ASSESS your needs
2. BUILD your plan
3. CREATE your policy, implement and evaluate

Growing Fit is in its 5th year providing professional development to ECE providers. In 5 years, they have trained 232 educators from 94 centers, reaching 7,785 children.

These complete slide sets are excellent resources for ECE trainers to get started with Healthy Kids, Healthy Future (formerly Let’s Move! Child Care). You can use just the introductory slide set or combine it with one or more of the other slide sets for a more in-depth training.

Want to add more content or take out a few slides? We encourage you to adapt the slide sets so that they meet the needs of the providers you support.

Introduction to Let’s Move! Child Care , also available in Spanish (PDF)

Serve Healthy Food

Offer Healthy Beverages

Increase Physical Activity

Limit Screen Time

Support Infant Feeding

Share these Healthy Kids, Healthy Future resources with child care and early education providers by handing them out at trainings and events, posting them on your website or adding them to a newsletter.

Healthy Kids, Healthy Future Promotional Flyer (also available in Spanish)

Healthy Kids, Healthy Future Promotional Flyer for Tribal Communities

These videos introduce the Healthy Kids, Healthy Future (formerly Let’s Move Child Care) program.

Run-Run, Let’s Move! Child Care: Inspirational introductory video about preventing childhood obesity. A perfect tool to get your providers motivated at the beginning of a training session.

What Is Let’s Move! Child Care?: More detailed video introducing LMCC, featuring Former First Lady Michelle Obama.

These videos have been developed and donated to Let’s Move! Child Care by Exchange Press, Video Active Productions and TurnKey Training, the makers of Preventing Obesity and Promoting Wellness in Early Childhood Settings, a comprehensive professional development training series for early care and education providers.

Healthy Beverages in Early Care and Education (An Online Class for California Child Care Providers):
This online, self-paced class and complimentary materials were created to inform early care and education providers about why drinks are important to children’s health, best practices for serving drinks in child care programs, and the four key messages in the California Healthy Beverages in Child Care Act (AB 2084).

Is Media the Other Parent? The Influence of Media & Technology on Young Children (PDF): This webinar contains an overview of the media landscape for young children; research on the media’s impact on children’s health and development; tips on how teachers can educate kids to be “media-smart”; and strategies for engaging parents, program staff and your community.

One Step at a Time: Bright Futures Obesity Prevention Training for Child Care Providers: This training includes three modules: Promoting Physical Activity for Young Children, Promoting Physical Activity in Child Care Programs, and Working with Parents.

Recommended Nutrition Standards for Infants and Young Children in Family Child Care Homes: This self-guided training was developed by a panel of child care and nutrition experts. It reviews guidelines for nutrition in family child care homes in two parts: recommended foods, and recommended practices for preparing and serving food.

ECE Learning Collaboratives Implementation Toolkit: The goal of this toolkit is to provide trainers with the roadmap and resources needed to successfully implement learning collaboratives for ECE providers. The resources in this toolkit are derived from Nemours’ National Early Care & Education Learning Collaborative (ECELC) Project, which focuses on improving practices and policies around nutrition, physical activity, breastfeeding support, and reducing screen time.

Guide to Promoting Professional Development: Learn to promote your professional development services more effectively and reach the professionals who can most benefit from your training opportunities, resources, and technical assistance. The Guide to Promoting Professional Development provides information and examples to help: identify appropriate audiences for your services; reach these audiences with relevant and well-defined services that are based on best practices; and design and share appealing materials that will increase interest, investment, and participation from these audiences.

National Association for the Education of Young Children’s Accreditation Standards and Caring for Our Children Crosswalk: The crosswalk  was developed to identify those National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accreditation standards that support childhood obesity prevention based on the Caring for Our Children: Preventing Childhood Obesity 2nd Edition standards. The crosswalk is divided by the  standards addressing healthy eating, physical activity, breastfeeding support and screen time.  This tool can be used as you support early care and education providers interested in the NAEYC accreditation process and meeting the Let’s Move! Child Care goals.

OrganWise Guys: A set of engaging characters who teach children about the importance of good nutrition, physical activity and overall healthy lifestyles with the goal of preventing childhood obesity. They have free resources to support adding healthy foods to children’s meals and incorporating more physical activity into children’s activities. The Kids Club promotes healthy eating and physical activity for children and families with a wide array of fun and engaging activities that anyone can use. Sign up to access more than 200+ monthly resources.

Technical Assistance Manual: Use this guide to train providers on the Healthy Kids, Healthy Future (formerly Let’s Move! Child Care) goals and best practices. You will be able to anticipate and work through common challenges child care and early education providers face in achieving the best practices.

Sesame Street’s Healthy Habits for Life Resource Kit: This kit is a great resource that helps you incorporate healthy physical activity and nutrition habits into your everyday routines. The guide has three sections: Get Moving, Food & Drink to Grow On, and Every Day Is a Healthy Day.

Creating Active Classrooms: These materials were created to support teachers of 2-5 year olds in early care and education (ECE) centers to increase the amount of physical activity in their classrooms. They can also be used by those who provide training and technical assistance to ECE teachers. The resources are designed to build short, easy-to-use activities into your daily child care routine. The resources include: 1) Training Workshop Slides, 2) Lesson Plans, and 3) Activity Cards. The training workshop slides can be used separately from or together with the lesson plans and activity cards.

» Creating Active Classrooms Training Workshop Slides

• Training Workshop Presentation Notes

» Guide to Lessons and Activity Cards

• Classroom Activities Lesson Plans
• Physical Activity “Activity Cards” (1 per page)
• Physical Activity “Activity Cards” (4 per page, double-sided printer-friendly)