Healthy habits
The Power of Nutrition
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Introduction – Nutrition: Fuel for a Healthy Body and Mind
In this introductory activity, children explore the connection between nutrition and well-being through observation and reflection. The video features a real-world setting in Iceland, where Gavin and Jack climb a volcano while discussing how the foods we choose affect our energy, focus, and overall health.
They highlight the role of antioxidants, protein, fibre, and omega-3s in supporting a healthy body and brain—boosting immunity, sustaining energy levels, and improving concentration. Children are encouraged to reflect on their own food choices and recognise how small changes can make a big difference.
Core Skill: Scientific understanding of the impact of nutrition on physical health, brain function, and energy levels.
This week, we’re learning about something really important—nutrition. That means thinking carefully about the food we eat and how it affects our energy, focus, and overall health.
Gavin and Jack filmed this lesson on top of a volcano in Iceland, where they talked about how the fuel we put into our bodies—just like fuel for climbing a mountain—can make a big difference to how we feel.
Eating sugary snacks like chocolate or biscuits might taste good for a moment, but they don’t give us lasting energy. Instead, eating things like fruit, vegetables, nuts, and protein-rich foods helps our bodies stay strong, focused, and ready for the day.
This week, your challenge is to make mindful food choices. Try having a high-protein, high-fibre breakfast, aim for two pieces of fruit and three vegetables each day, and choose healthier options whenever you can. Then write in your Healthy Habits booklet about how these choices made you feel.
At the end of the week, you’ll share your reflections with your classmates—because your good habits might just inspire someone else to make a healthy change too!
Important – Download Your Healthy Habits Booklet
This week, students will use a provided template to begin designing their Healthy Habits booklet. Emphasise the importance of keeping all content within the dotted safe zone to ensure nothing is cut off if printed. This activity blends creative expression with mindful reflection, resulting in a personal keepsake that celebrates their growth throughout the program.
Core Skill: Structured creativity and presentation awareness
Over the next ten weeks, this booklet is going to be all about you—your thoughts, your reflections, and your journey towards a calmer, more focused you. Each week, you’ll explore a different healthy habit, and you’ll add your own writing, drawings, and ideas into the pages.
We’ve given you a special template to help you stay organised. Think of it like your mindfulness journal. You can personalise it—change the colours, decorate the pages, and really make it your own. Just one important thing—make sure everything stays inside the dotted line (called the safe zone). That way, if you decide to print your book or upload it to the Upschool library, none of your work will be cut off.
Every day, you’ll come back to your booklet to record something—maybe how you felt after a mindfulness session, a peaceful moment you noticed, or a drawing that captures your calm space. Over time, it’ll become a collection of your thoughts, your habits, and your growth.
By the end of the ten weeks, you’ll have a finished book that shows how far you’ve come. You might even want to print a copy and keep it as a reminder of the calm, focus, and healthy habits you’ve built.
Weekly Keywords
In this activity, students receive a task card with foundational vocabulary related to nutrition and healthy eating. Their challenge is to explain each term in the simplest way possible, helping them build a strong understanding of how food fuels the brain and body.
This exercise supports scientific thinking and encourages discussion about energy, concentration, and making healthy choices—laying the foundation for future lessons on how what we eat affects our ability to learn, play, and feel our best each day.
On the task card provided, you’ll find a list of words related to nutrition and healthy eating. Your challenge is to explain each word in the simplest way possible.
This activity will help you understand how the food we eat affects our body, energy levels, and brain. It’s a great way to prepare for future discussions on how to make smart food choices, stay energised throughout the day, and keep your body strong and healthy.
Quote of the Week – Dr. Mark Hyman
In this activity, students reflect on an inspirational quote by Dr. Mark Hyman about the impact of food on the body and brain.
Students will write down or illustrate the quote and explore its meaning, focusing on the idea that every food choice sends a message to the body. This encourages them to think about how nutrition supports energy, focus, mood, and long-term health.
The activity helps students recognise how their everyday eating habits can shape their physical and mental wellbeing. It fosters self-awareness, informed
This week’s quote helps us think about how food affects more than just our tummies:
“Food is not just fuel. It’s information. It talks to your DNA and tells it what to do.” – Dr. Mark Hyman
That’s a big idea—but here’s what it means: the food you eat sends messages to your body. Healthy foods like fruit, vegetables, nuts, and grains can help your brain focus, your body grow strong, and your mood stay balanced.
Write this quote into your Healthy Habits booklet, then decorate the page or draw a picture showing what it means to you.
Now reflect: What kinds of foods help your body feel energised or focused? Can you think of a time when you ate something healthy and noticed a difference in how you felt?
Let this quote remind you: every time you eat, you’re giving your body instructions—so make them great!
Design Your Information Card – The Power of Nutrition
In this task, students design an information card showing how healthy nutrition supports physical and mental wellbeing. They’ll include both visuals and practical tips, drawing on ideas from the video and their own experiences with food and energy levels.
Encourage thoughtful design and personal reflection—what do they notice about how they feel after eating a healthy breakfast, a piece of fruit, or a balanced meal? Do they have more focus, better mood, or longer-lasting energy?
This activity helps students take ownership of their health by combining creativity, knowledge, and self-awareness.
Core Skill: Synthesising information through visual and written communication.
In this activity, your job is to make an information card that shows how healthy food choices can help your body and brain feel their best.
Start by designing a picture that shows someone eating something healthy or being full of energy because of the food they’ve eaten. It could be someone enjoying a colourful plate of fruit and vegetables, eating breakfast before school, playing sport with energy, or feeling focused during class. Use drawings or images that remind you of feeling strong, healthy, and ready to learn.
Next, write your own top tips or reasons why good nutrition is important. You can use ideas from our video—like how eating high-protein, high-fibre foods gives you more energy, or how fruit and vegetables are packed with nutrients that keep your body strong.
When you're done, share your card with your class so everyone can learn how food fuels our bodies and minds. This card will go into your Healthy Habits booklet—a growing collection of smart advice to help you and others live a healthy, balanced life.
Design Your Nutrition Page – 12 Foods That Help Our Body and Mind
In this activity, students will create a page in their Healthy Habits booklet that highlights twelve nutritious foods that support physical and mental wellbeing. They’ll begin by reviewing your example, then brainstorm and present their own ideas using both writing and visuals.
This encourages thoughtful reflection on how different foods help fuel the body and brain, while supporting creativity, health awareness, and clear communication.
Core Skill: Applying personal research and creativity to promote wellbeing through everyday healthy eating.
In this activity, your task is to create a colourful page in your Healthy Habits booklet showing 12 foods that help your body and brain stay strong, focused, and full of energy.
Start by looking at my example, which includes ideas like bananas for energy, berries for antioxidants, nuts for brain health, and fish for Omega-3s. Then, using your own ideas and a little bit of research, design your own creative page.
Be sure to use drawings, bright colours, and simple writing to explain how each food helps. Think about which foods give you energy for school, sport, or staying calm when things get stressful.
When you're finished, your page will be added to your Healthy Habits booklet to inspire others to make smarter food choices—and remind yourself that every bite counts when it comes to fuelling your body and mind.
Track Your Energy – How Does the Food We Eat Change Our Energy Each Day?
In this activity, students will track their energy and mood each day using a simple task card. After eating different types of food throughout the day, they’ll reflect on how those choices made them feel—physically and emotionally. Encourage students to connect their eating habits with changes in energy, focus, or mood, and to look for patterns across the week.
This supports self-awareness, informed decision-making, and helps students understand how nutrition can directly impact their wellbeing, learning, and overall performance.
Core Skill: Self-monitoring and physical/emotional reflection through experiential learning.
Now that you’ve learned how nutrition affects your body and brain, it’s time to track how you feel each day after making different food choices.
This week, use the task card opposite to record what you eat and how it makes you feel. After each main meal or snack, check in with yourself: Do you feel full of energy? Sluggish? Focused? Restless? Strong? Sleepy?
Circle the emotion that best matches how you feel, and write a short note about what you ate and what might have influenced your energy levels or mood.
By the end of the week, look back at your notes. Which foods gave you lasting energy? Which left you feeling tired or distracted? Let’s find out how the fuel we choose—bite by bite—can power our day and help us feel our best from the inside out.
Spreading the Word – Weekly Community Challenge
In this activity, students will select actions from a task card to apply their knowledge of nutrition in real-world contexts, focusing on encouraging others to make healthier food choices. This activity promotes leadership by empowering students to independently choose and carry out simple, meaningful actions that support health and well-being in their school or home community.
The emphasis on real-world application fosters a sense of responsibility, initiative, and purpose. Whether their actions succeed or not, students learn the value of effort and the impact they can have in helping others develop positive eating habits.
Core Skill: Applying knowledge through independent action to promote community wellbeing
Choose an action from the task card and use your new knowledge to help others make healthier food choices. It doesn’t matter which action you choose—what matters is that you share what you’ve learned to support others in eating well, feeling energised, and staying healthy.
You can choose as many actions as you like from the list—such as encouraging a friend to eat fruit at snack time, helping your family prepare a healthy breakfast, or creating a poster to show the benefits of eating veggies.
Remember, it’s not about being perfect—it’s about making small, positive changes and inspiring the people around you to do the same. Healthy habits can start with you!
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Weekly Art Therapy – Nourishing with Colour
This weekly art activity encourages relaxation and reflection, helping students connect healthy eating with a calm, mindful routine. Teachers are encouraged to introduce it gently, creating a peaceful atmosphere that signals a moment to pause and think about how food nourishes both body and mind.
Allow students the freedom to choose where they sit—whether it’s a quiet corner of the classroom or a shaded spot outside—and consider setting aside a regular weekly time for this creative break. This activity can also be shared with families to support conversations about food, mood, and wellbeing at home.
Encourage students to focus on the process of colouring rather than the final product. The goal is to enjoy being present, express creativity, and reflect on how healthy habits—like eating well—can help us feel more balanced, focused, and strong.
Each week, we’ll share a fun and relaxing art activity with you. This time, it’s all about the food that fuels us. Your job? Take a moment to slow down, find a peaceful spot—maybe in your room, the garden, or a sunny corner of your home—and get creative.
Grab your favourite colouring pencils, sit near a window or in soft light, and if you like, play some calm music. Then colour in the picture on the next page, filled with vibrant fruits, veggies, and foods that help your body and brain feel their best.
Art is a wonderful way to relax and reflect. As you colour, think about how the food we eat gives us energy, strength, and focus. Notice how your body feels as you slow down and enjoy the moment.
This is your time to pause, breathe, and connect—with yourself and your health. There’s no right or wrong—just colour, imagine, and enjoy.
My Weekly Energy & Mood Diary
This activity supports children in tracking their daily mood and energy levels using a simple symbol-based diary. Teachers should encourage a quiet moment of reflection each day, helping students connect how they feel with the food choices they made—such as eating a healthy breakfast, choosing fruit over sugar, or staying hydrated.
This promotes self-awareness, emotional regulation, and an understanding of how nutrition impacts both mood and focus. Emphasise that the diary is private, offering a safe space for honest and personal reflection. The goal is to help students make thoughtful connections between what they eat and how they feel—encouraging healthier habits one day at a time.
As you work through each activity this week, take a quiet moment at the end of each day to check in with yourself. How did you feel today? Did your food choices give you energy? Did you feel focused, calm, tired, or full of energy?
Using the task card provided, choose a symbol that best shows your energy and mood—energised, okay, or low. Add it to your diary and write a short note about what you ate and how it made you feel. Did a healthy breakfast help you concentrate? Did too much sugar leave you feeling a bit flat?
By the end of the week, you might begin to notice patterns. Maybe you feel better on days when you eat fruit at recess or have a protein-rich breakfast. These discoveries help you understand how food affects your mind and body—and how small choices can make a big difference.
This diary is just for you. You don’t need to share it with anyone. It’s your space to reflect, learn, and feel proud of the healthy decisions you’re making for yourself each day.
Weekly Quiz: The Power of Nutrition
Students will complete a ten-question quiz to reinforce their understanding of how nutrition supports physical health, focus, mood, and energy. A score of 80% or higher earns a certificate, with eight to collect across the course.
This activity promotes knowledge retention, encourages ongoing engagement, and celebrates progress as students build lifelong habits around healthy eating and making thoughtful food choices.
Core Skill: Reinforcing content knowledge through assessment and reward.
This week, you’ll take a fun quiz all about the power of nutrition and how the food we eat affects our body and brain. After rewatching the video, your task is to answer ten questions about how healthy eating supports your energy, focus, mood, and overall well-being.
You’ll learn how choosing the right foods—like fruit, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains—can help you feel stronger, think more clearly, and stay full of energy throughout the day.
If you score 80% or more, you’ll earn a special certificate to celebrate your learning—and it will be emailed straight to you. There are 8 certificates to collect in total, so do your best and keep making healthy choices!
Good luck—you’ve got this!