It was designed as a tool to equip children in third, fourth and fifth grades to make lifestyle choices that promote fitness, health and wellness and lessen the likelihood of chronic disease (i.e., cardiovascular).

Kids Take Heart aligns with national standards for health and fitness education, and is one model teachers could use to ensure developmentally appropriate, standards-based instruction is provided to students. Kids Take Heart also involves student health ambassadors in outreach to promote heart health information among families and the greater community.

Then students progress through a fitness unit that helps them distinguish sedentary, moderate and vigorous activity, as well as the components of health-related fitness potentially targeted within each. All of this occurs through physical activities in which students participate. Once students identify how active they are, they determine their daily values, and the importance of quality, whole foods in the right quantity to achieve energy balance.

Because stress is a risk factor for many chronic diseases, and children are not immune, a stress unit helps students devise pathways for coping with and moving through stress positively. A culminating goal-setting lesson involves children in setting health goals as an application of what they've learned throughout the curriculum.

Administrator:
The Hope has a wonderful appreciation and interest in impacting student learning through promotion of active learning contextualized with Kids Take Heart programming.

A culminating project in the Kids Take Heart Curriculum involves students in writing nutrition or fitness goals and tracking them to ensure success. In the end, students and parents briefly describe how the task impacted them:

Students:
This task helped me think more about what I was eating and how I could eat better.

I learned that it's not that hard to eat fruits and vegetables every day.

Parents:
Keyana has been very serious about reaching this goal. A few times during these two weeks she actually decided to ride her bike when she really wanted to ride her "new" motorized scooter. She's been going on long rides and making sure we've been timing her. Keyana has really enjoyed reaching this goal, and she understands the importance of it.

Jake has made an effort to eat fruit rather than chips or sweets. He rarely drinks soda pop anymore, and he understands and shares that staying active and eating healthy is going to make you feel better.

Starting in 2005, The Hope began piloting the Kids Take Heart Program with Hope Health's funding support. Hope Health serves the workplace community in promoting wellness, while our partner, The Hope starts the process at an earlier age. In this way we cover all seasons of life, which is one of our founding principles. And we give you a way to make a very successful health and fitness program available for kids in your own community. The kids of your employees can participate in the program in your local schools.

As for how the Kids Take Heart Program came about, it's been a team effort the entire way. Early on, The Hope partnered with the Pacific Science Center on many of the concepts woven into Kids Take Heart.

In the throes of development, we met with advisory panels of third through fifth grade teachers to verify developmentally appropriate content.

In 2006, The Hope met with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction's (OSPI) Health and Fitness Program Supervisor — to get the word out. They encouraged us to apply to share at OSPI's 2006 Summer Institute. So we did and ended up hosting a session. During the 2007/2008 school year, The Center for Research and Learning helped us measure increases in students' knowledge of, as well as attitudes and interest in, health via pre and post surveys.

More recently we contracted with a consultant who has worked for OSPI to confirm each lesson's alignment with education standards. As a result, we can confidently promote Kids Take Heart aligns with national and state standards for health and fitness, and is one model teachers could use to ensure developmentally appropriate, standards-based instruction is provided to students.

Once training is complete, teachers can schedule a curriculum kit including all lesson materials for two months during the school year. There's a leasing cost of $200 not including shipping (to the school and back to The Hope). If teachers wanted their own kit year round, they could create their own (approximate cost $3,788) or purchase a kit made by The Hope for $5,125 not including shipping.

The Hope's staff will be available to support teachers throughout training and implementation. A conference call with The Hope's staff and the elementary school curriculum expert and principle is the first step in the process.

Yes. Teachers can complete the online training component (www.kidstakeheart.net) and earn three graduate continuing education credits through Seattle Pacific University. See the course syllabus under the Program Details tab for course requirements.

return to top