BCS Kids Take Challenge for Better Health

The fifth grade enrichment class at Bethany Community School takes their health seriously, so they decided to take on the ambitious project of entering the Find Your Balance Challenge. The Balance Challenge is a contest designed to reward student teams for taking steps toward achieving Energy Balance in their school communities with the prize for the winning entry being a sizeable $30,000 Sports Authority gift certificate.

Brigid Tesla, Abby Harbinson, Keri Tenerowicz and Ian Pittenger gave a Power Point presentation to the Bethany Board of Education at their meeting this Wednesday and offered their audience insight into the eating habits of grammar school children.

According to the presenters, the goal is to make sure the food going into the body is balanced by the energy going out [with physical exercise.] To find out if BCS students were achieving this balance the class assembled a survey on Survey Monkey asking classmates key questions such as how much water they drank in a day, what snacks they ate and what was their typical lunch. They interviewed students and asked if they ate breakfast regularly and what was their intake of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. They also took pictures of  “typical” lunches in the cafeteria.

What the students learned was that none of their classmates drank nearly the recommended amount of water, many of them did not eat breakfast, 20 percent didn’t include vegetables as a major part of their diets and not a single one of them knew how to read a nutrition label on a food package. Also, many students stood on the playground and chatted during recess instead of participating in physical activity.

The enrichment class concluded their task was to find ways to correct these problems, and they offered ideas as to how it could be done such as assigning a teacher or student rep to get kids moving on the playground and offer more water in school.

If they win the grand prize, they have already decided how they will use the Sports Authority credit – they would purchase energy bikes that generate power to be used by BCS students.

“It would be spent on ways to balance energy going in with energy going out,” they concluded.