Carnival style Heath related game?

[sks0730]

We are having something like a mini fair at my school coming up in a couple weeks. I was asked to set up a health booth and do BP checks for the parents and I would like to set up some sort of health games for the kids (it's a K-12 school). I think most of the other booths have carnival style games, any ideas of what I could do?

[Flare, ASN, BSN]

The first thing that kind of popped into my head was a guess your weight type thing - but i could see it being poorly received (but maybe not - my kids love getting on my scale, i'm constantly telling them to get off of it). Perhaps if you turned it into a "Guess your OWN weight" or "guess your BMI" type thing and used it as an opportunity for a discussion on health and wellness it would be better. I figure that is classic carnival theme and i assume you probably own a scale - so there is no cost unless you want to give out prizes or other give aways

You could always look at the health edco website to see if there is something else that may fit your needs better.

[schooldistrictnurse]

Whatever you decide, plan to have a helper because you won't be able to do the game and BP's both. You could do a poster board with "Breakfast fuels your Day" or something like that and have columns where kids could put stickers if they had milk, juice, cereal, protein or whatever. In any case, have fun!

[sks0730]

Those both sound like great ideas! I do want to give prizes, but I think those may even be provided for me. I've never done anything like this, as this is my first year as a school nurse, so I am both nervous and excited. I think it will be a great opportunity to be interactive with the students and parents. I do plan on having one of my nurse friends come out and help me so that we can have multiple things going on at our "booth." I really like the thought of guess you own weight thing but I wonder if my middle/high school crowd may be a little too self conscience for that???? Also, I'm not positive, but I think we may be in the grass, so the scale my not work accurately. Thanks again for the ideas guys, if anyone else thinks of any keep them coming, I would love for my booth to be fun and a little educational as well!

[bsyrn, ASN, RN]

You could come up with some age appropriate health related questions for the kids, for example, how long should you wash your hands for...if they get it right, they get a prize. You may want to re-think doing B/P for parents. If a parent has a very high b/p what would you do, if it is too low, should they then drive... what if they do drive and pass out....you just open your self and the school up to liability.

[Sarah01s]

I actually think this is a great idea to get kids into having a healthy life style. You could give out papers for the food pyramid and also teach kids long with adults how to have a happy and healthy life. You could have a skeleton to show kids and parents about parts of the body that are essential to eating right. (:

[Supernrse01, BSN]

I made up a food pyramid game where my students get a shopping list. I have pictures of lots of different foods on the table, along with shopping bags labeled with the components of the pyramid (fruits and veggies, oils, meat, etc...) they use the shopping list to find what they need. Once they find the food, they have to drop it into the appropriate shopping bag. I play it as a relay game but they could also do it one at a time. The kids have fun with it!