Many children consume up to half of their daily calories at school, so it is essential to make sure they have healthy snacks and drinks available, in addition to healthier meals.

This book offers 52 physical activities and their variations that are fun for young children. This is designed for children to develop fundamental movement skills and physical fitness, inclusive of children with special needs.

This assessment tool will help communities, school-siting professionals, schools, and city officials identify barriers that prevent students from walking and biking to and from school each day and create solutions to encourage neighborhoods to be more physically active.

This fact sheet discusses how school districts can use their school wellness policies to reduce sugary drink consumption. It includes information on what beverages schools can sell to students, the importance of addressing sugary drinks in local school wellness policies, and optional sugary drink policy elements that school districts can include in their local school wellness policy. While this ChangeLab Solutions’ resource was designed for California communities, information contained within the factsheet can be adapted for use in other states as well.

Caring for Our Children, 3rd Edition (CFOC3) is a collection of 686 national standards that represent the best evidence, expertise, and experience in the country on quality health and safety practices and policies that should be followed in today's early care and education settings.

The new CACFP meal patterns lay the foundation for a healthy eating pattern for children and adults in care. USDA also developed optional best practices that build on the meal patterns and highlight areas where centers and day care homes may take additional steps to further improve the nutritional quality of the meals they serve. The best practices reflect recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the National Academy of Medicine to further help increase participants’ consumption of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, and reduce the consumption of added sugars and saturated fats. Best Practices are optional and not required for meal reimbursement.

USDA recently revised the CACFP meal patterns to ensure children and adults have access to healthy, balanced meals throughout the day. Under the new child and adult meal patterns, meals served will include a greater variety of vegetables and fruit, more whole grains, and less added sugar and saturated fat. The changes made to the meal patterns are based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, scientific recommendations from the National Academy of Medicine, and stakeholder input. CACFP centers and day care homes must comply with the new meal patterns by October 1, 2017.

USDA recently revised the CACFP meal patterns to ensure children and adults have access to healthy, balanced meals throughout the day. The changes to the infant meal pattern support breastfeeding and the consumption of vegetables and fruit without added sugars. These changes are based on the scientific recommendations from the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics and stakeholder input. CACFP centers and day care homes must comply with the new meal patterns by October 1, 2017.

CSPAP is a multi-component approach by which school districts and schools use all opportunities for students to be physically active, meet the nationally-recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day, and develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to be physically active for a lifetime

This worksheet provides a guide for school boards, superintendents, district staff and others to develop and review board policies and administrative regulations related to physical activity.

Children develop eating competence step-by-step throughout the growing-up years when they are fed according to a stage-appropriate division of responsibility. At every stage, parents take leadership with feeding and let the child be self-directed with eating.

These guidelines are a set of recommended practices for programs to use as they strive for excellence in the care and education of young children throughout Arizona. This document is intended to provide guidance by delineating quality and providing a set of indicators that concretely describe what a program will look like when providing high quality early care and education for children birth through age six.

Children develop eating competence step-by-step throughout the growing-up years when they are fed according to a stage-appropriate division of responsibility. At every stage, parents take leadership with feeding and let the child be self-directed with eating.

Children are born loving their bodies, curious about them and inclined to be active. Parents provide structure, safety, and opportunities. Children choose how much and whether to move and the manner of moving.

Children are born loving their bodies, curious about them and inclined to be active. Parents provide structure, safety, and opportunities. Children choose how much and whether to move and the manner of moving.

This handout will help guide participants in making feeding decisions for their child.

This toolkit contains the materials necessary to plan and deliver an Empower Advanced training. This toolkit should only be utilized after completion of an Empower AdvancedTrain the Trainer session.

Note: Videos are included throughout the training presentation. Refer to the Facilitation Notes for indication when a video is meant to be played. Video files are included for download in the toolkit.

This toolkit contains the materials necessary to plan and deliver an Empower Basic training. This toolkit should only be utilized after completion of an Empower Basic Train the Trainer session.

Note: Videos are included throughout the training presentation. Refer to the Facilitation Notes for indication when a video is meant to be played. Video files are included for download in the toolkit.

Use this infographic as a tool with providers, parents, and community partners to communicate how the Empower Standards may be implemented and how daily practices support each standard. Keep in mind that your work in the AzNN applies to the Empower Standards related to obesity prevention (1, 3, 4, 5, and 6).

Sample policies for Empower Standards 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6. ECE decision makers may use these policy templates when creating or revising policies in their setting.

This guide is intended to help early care and learning professionals and their programs, including center based, family child care, Head Start and public preschools, successfully implement Family Style Dining practices. This guide focuses on serving meals family style with toddlers and preschoolers, though afterschool programs may adopt these practices as well.

Model school wellness policy language for limiting unhealthy marketing to students.

Good nutrition and the value of healthy food choices are often taught in the classroom. However, many times foods served in the classroom, in the case of a class party or rewards for behavior, are low in nutrients and high in calories. This sends students a mixed message – that good nutrition is just a part of their education and is not important to their health. To send the right message and to keep our children healthy, teachers, staff, and parents can work together to offer healthy classroom party alternatives.

This fact sheet is designed to help parents and community advocates ensure that their district’s policy is enforced.

Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs and projects help schools and communities improve safety, and get more children walking and bicycling to and from school. This resource guide focuses on schools and communities where at least half of students or community residents are low-income; it is intended to fill that gap.

The purpose of this guide is to explain why your ECE center or family child care home should serve water to children under your care, and to give you information on how to do it. It also describes how providing water fits in with serving other beverages.

These guidelines describe expectations about what infants and toddlers should know (understand) and do (competencies and skills) across multiple domains of development during specific age ranges, as well as what adults can do to support children’s optimal learning and development.

When you think back to elementary school, recess is often a highlight of the day. Recess was a time to play with friends and socialize. Research shows that recess is more than just a break from classroom time — it helps students not only increase their daily physical activity promoting healthy growth and development, but also helps students practice social skills (e.g., cooperation, following rules, problem solving, negotiation, sharing, communication), positively engage in classroom activities (e.g., being on-task, not being disruptive), and enhance cognitive performance (e.g., attention, memory). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlines the following benefits of recess for students:

• Increasing their level of physical activity.

• Improving their memory, attention, and concentration.

• Helping them stay on-task in the classroom.

• Reducing disruptive behavior in the classroom.

• Improving their social and emotional development (e.g.,

The evidence is clear - healthy, active students are ready to learn and contribute to a positive school climate.

Engage school staff and parents in school wellness using these ready-to-go communication tools. Sharing news about your Local School Wellness Policy is easy with these flyers, presentations, newsletter articles, and social media posts. Your school can personalize them to make them specific to your Local School Wellness Policy activities.

This fact sheet explains why liability fears shouldn’t keep schools from supporting Safe Routes to School programs, and offers practical tips for schools and community advocates.

The National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN) developed model joint use agreements to aid the development of such agreements. There is no one model joint use agreement and there is no single method to develop an agreement, but these are a great start.

This resource is a state-level tool for state boards of education, state policymakers, and school health advocates supporting healthy school food environments.

This guide is intended to serve as a practical tool for implementing feeding best practices for optimal nutrition in early care and education settings. Those who work in child care centers, schools, community organizations or primary health care practices play an important part in supporting children’s development of healthy habits, both by providing nutritious food and by teaching children how to make healthy food choices. Children who learn these habits when they’re young are more likely to continue making healthy choices in adulthood. By sharing information with families and early care and education providers, you can work with them as partners to support healthy children.

Nemours Health and Prevention Services (NHPS) created these physical activity guidelines to help promote and support quality physical activity for children and youth. Those who work in child care centers, schools, community organizations or primary health care practices have powerful opportunities to ensure children have access to health-promoting physical activity on a daily basis. Equipped with information about best practices, parents, family members and neighbors can serve as important advocates to ensure that physical activity becomes a regular and enjoyable part of daily life for children.

This workbook serves to help child care providers, families, and communities work together to raise fit, happy children. Child care providers and other early childhood professionals can use this workbook to develop their own individualized wellness policies.

This toolkit is intended to provide a range of science-informed, promising or emerging obesity prevention strategies to address childhood obesity in rural communities in five different sectors that serve children.

This guide was developed to aid in designing and painting playgrounds with a goal of increasing opportunities for physical activity in preschools. The guide addresses: preschool physical activity recommendations; fundamental movement skills; suggested playground elements; and preparation and instructions for painting and tools to assist with playground designs.

This toolkit is a nuts-and-bolts guide designed to help school staff and other community leaders craft and implement joint use agreements. Complete with model agreement language and success stories from communities around the country. This toolkit provides a comprehensive overview of the most common ways to finance joint use arrangements, and guidance on how to overcome obstacles that may arise in negotiating and enforcing a joint use agreement.

The second edition of Preventing Childhood Obesity in Early Care and Education Programs is the new set of national standards describing evidence-based best practices in nutrition, physical activity, and screen time for early care and education programs. The standards are for ALL types of early care and education settings - centers and family child care homes. This manual provides the foundational knowledge and reasoning that supports obesity prevention standards in early care and education settings. Use this manual to understand rationale and more comprehensive background information pertaining to nutrition and physical activity standards. 

This guide is a comprehensive reference manual designed to support the development of Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs. It provides links to other SRTS publications and training resources. It contains several chapters about specific topics of a SRTS program and is an “all-inclusive” guide.

This illustrated roadmap outlines thirteen policy options that can help make Safe Routes to School a permanent part of our communities. The accompanying brochure breaks down the policy options even further.

This illustrated roadmap outlines thirteen policy options that can help make Safe Routes to School a permanent part of our communities. The accompanying brochure breaks down the policy options even further.

This fact sheet provides talking points and information to help communities create Safe Routes to School programs and policies. English_Spanish

This Guide (created by the AZ Health Zone Cooperative Extension - Nutritional Sciences) is meant to be used with student groups to give them an opportunity to provide schools with knowledge, motivation, and resources needed to build a lunchroom environment to make healthier choices.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 requires USDA to establish nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools — beyond the federally-supported meals programs. This infographic shows the difference between the types of snacks sold before Smart Snack standard and the types offered after the standard was implemented; it also highlights the difference in empty calories.

The purpose of this guide is to provide a clear description of how to plan and organize a walking school bus using adult volunteers as leaders. This step-by-step guide outlines how to plan and implement a walking school bus for your school, and includes proven tools, tips and resources for a fast and easy start. Whether or not you are familiar with SRTS, this guide will get you started on the right foot.

This document, Strategies for Recess in Schools, describes strategies for planning and providing recess in schools to help increase participation in physical activity and improve academic achievement (e.g., performance, behavior, attention). The audiences for this document include state and school district leaders that provide technical assistance and professional development on recess

ECE providers are in a special position to empower young children to learn habits that can keep them healthy for life. ADHS developed the Empower Program in 2010 as a voluntary program to support licensed ECE facilities’ efforts to empower young children to grow up healthy and is based on 10 program standards.

This tool aims to help get kids more physically activity on their way to school. This resource identifies areas to work on in order to get a walking school bus in your community which includes where to start, reaching more children, identifying potential routes, finalizing logistics and kicking off the program. To learn more, please visit: http://www.walkingschoolbus.org/

With a Smarter Lunchroom, your lunchroom team can have a positive impact on your students’ eating habits. This toolkit contains materials and resources that will help make the creation of your Smarter Lunchroom more manageable.

A conversation guide for parents and adult caregivers of children age 7 to 11 years old as it relates to being overweight and obesity.

This fact sheet provides an introduction to and basic information about joint use agreements.

YPAR is a proven framework and model used to engage, empower, and activate youth on research to improve their schools, afterschool programs, communities, and/or service groups. YPAR is a model SNAP-Ed program, as noted in the SNAP-Ed Strategies and Interventions Toolkit. Implementing this program requires a Training and Technical Assistance, which is provided by the Public Health Institute in California: Contact Amy DeLisio, MPH, RD • (916) 265-4042 x109 • [email protected]