Winter SCORES: Kids learn how to fuel their bodies through nutrition!

Written by Mira Smith
Writing Coordinator

Again this year, one of my new year’s resolutions is to be more conscious of my eating and exercising habits. My main motivations for this apparently quite-popular resolution is to improve my athletic abilities.

Fortunately, I am coordinating DC SCORES' winter nutrition and healthy eating program at seven schools -- so teaching conscious eating will be a part of my job position.

Perfect!

For the next six weeks beginning today, DC SCORES shifts away from the writing program for a nutrition and healthy eating curriculum -- complemented by multi-school soccer clinics. The goal is to introduce to students the importance of combining exercise with nutrition to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The curriculum covers a wide range of themes and activities each aiming to empower our poet-athletes to make healthier conscious eating choices. Each lesson will address a specific topic such as reading nutrition labels, serving size, food origins and drinks.

One of my favorite lessons focuses on fast food. Poet athletes will begin by playing a fast food taboo card game. Using nutrition terms they have learned, each poet-athlete will have to describe a fast food item for the rest of the team to guess. After discussing why they like fast food -- but how they should avoid eating it constantly -- students will create advertisements for healthy fast food items they invent.

Some of the most exciting parts of winter programming are the cooking sessions. Once a week, teams will use healthy ingredients to make fun and tasty snacks. This first week’s recipe is a breakfast banana split, which uses vanilla yogurt and cereal instead of ice cream and sprinkles. On the last day of the season, teams will get to try new foods including hummus, yogurt covered raisins and rice cakes.

Stay tuned for more blog posts about nutrition lessons, our cooking sessions with partner program Brainfood, and Giant supermarket tours.