Resources
Helpful Resources
The ideas and support materials to help your child complete their challenges are on the relevant challenge page. See below for a collated list of these resources, and more.
General
- Find fun activities and a parent toolbox on the Sparklers Website. These cover a wide range of wellbeing topics including managing emotions, living in the moment, being grateful, and showing kindness.
- HealthInfo is a health information website for the general public, funded by Canterbury-DHB. It is written and approved by local doctors, practice nurses, hospital clinicians, and other healthcare professionals in an easy-to-understand format.
- What’s Up is a fantastic website to introduce your child to. It is a free online chat or phone service for kids and teenagers to talk to someone (a trained counsellor) about anything at all.
Exercise
- For more information about keeping kids active, see HealthInfo – Ideas for keeping kids active
- Active Canterbury has easy helpful ways to increase activity in your family for everyone
- See also the poster Be Active Every Day, HE2313.
- You view and order these, as well as other nutrition resources, at healthed.govt.nz
- Ministry of Health
- New Zealand Physical Activity Guidelines
- Feet First
- Feet First
Food
- Read more about healthy eating in Eating for Healthy Children Aged 2–12, HE1302, and Eating for Healthy Teenagers, HE1230.
- A good breakfast on Healthinfo
- Healthy school lunches from Healthinfo
- Smart snacking for children: Snack ideas and tips for healthy snacks for kids
- Fussy eaters: It often takes 10 to 15 times for a food to be offered before it is accepted. Find out more about how you can deal with fussy eaters.
- Parenting healthy & active children: A short and actionable article on how to teach children to eat well.
- Tips to help your child be healthy & active: A helpful checklist to cover the basics. No surprises: this summarises many of the aspects of the Healthy Heroes challenge!
- How to cut down on sugar: The rundown on sugar, what’s a normal amount to aim for, what to look out for, and tips to cut back.
- Kids are more likely to eat healthily if they’re involved in the preparation and understand how healthy food helps their bodies. Pick an activity or food idea in Kids’ Kitchen to do with your child.
- Let Lindsay tell you why she loves salad. It saves her time, mess, and money
- Eat for health is a website with many resources, posters, and brochures on eating guidelines
Sleep
- Kids Health: This website covers heaps of information on child sleep. A good starter article is some of the common issues children have with sleeping, including delayed sleep, sleep association (the need for a toy or person to get to sleep), bedtime resistance, anxiety, insomnia, and restless legs. It has useful tips for what you can do about it. It also links to tools to deal with sleep problems.
- This article focuses on normal sleep for primary school children, common sleep problems in this age group, and a range of strategies to manage them. There is also information about safe sleep for babies, and helping your teenager.
- Sleep Health Foundation: This Australian site has some excellent information about sleep problems in children.
- These top 10 sleep tips cover the basics of helping your child get to sleep.
Mind
Teach your child to ride a bike
Helping others
- How about sending someone a compliment? Resources from All Right, including parenting guides, are all on their website
- See these 8 tips to help turn household chores into learning experiences for kids
- This article has some ways to encourage your kids to acts of kindness
- Sparklers have great activity ideas for kindness
