Your Choosy team is pleased to offer for FREE a giant Choosy Kids poster (41 inches by 24 inches) for your classroom or school. Print out as many posters as you like. Follow this link to download the poster. Once you download the pdf, print the 12 pages in color. Trim the poster edges and tape the poster together. You will need Adobe Acrobat reader to view the poster document. Click here to download a free version of Adobe Acrobat reader.
You can now select which size poster you would like to download. All free posters now come in 3 different sizes, Small (8.5" or 11" wide), Medium (17" or 22" wide), or Large (25.5" or 33" wide). All posters assemble the same as before only now you can pict the perfect size to suit your space. These posters have been sized to waste as little paper as possible and reduce the need to trim before assembly.

Download Different sizes of our other Posters Below

NEW!! Select a link below to download the Choosy Juggler Poster

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Select a link below to download the Choosy Logo Poster

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Select a link below to download the Choosy Chef Poster

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Select a link below to download the Choosy Stance Poster

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Select a link below to download the Choosy Hiker Poster to Celebrate Earth Day

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Serving Size vs. Portion Size: What’s the difference?
Nourish Interactive
Michelle Mirizzi, MS, Registered Dietitian

One of the best ways you can help your child live healthy and maintain a healthy weight is to teach them what an actual serving size looks like. They can use this knowledge to make healthier choices when eating at school, having snacks or even choosing from a fast food menu.

Research shows that Americans are eating larger and larger portions. For example, twenty years ago a bagel was about 3 inches in diameter and 140 calories. Today’s bagels are about 6 inches in diameter, 350 calories and may count up to three or even four servings in the grains group. Let’s also compare a soda twenty years ago that was about 6.5 ounces and 85 calories. Today, an average soda is 20 ounces and can have 300 or more calories.

Servings and portions… What’s the difference?

Serving sizes are defined by the USDA Food Guide Pyramid as a standard amount used to help give advice about how much food to eat. It also helps us identify how many calories and nutrients are in a food. A portion is the amount of food that you choose to eat. There is no standard portion size and no single right or wrong portion size. However, knowing the size of a serving can help your child determine healthful portions.

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CIOF's Mission:

The Children’s International Obesity Foundation is dedicated to predicting, preventing, treating, and ultimately eliminating childhood overweight and obesity. This increasingly costly and painful health epidemic is affecting the world’s population of babies, youngsters, adolescents and young adults.

Funding Research
The Foundation will aggressively fund research into the underlying causalities of obesity. These includes genetic predispositions, biochemical and physiological factors, and environmental influences as well as nutrition, exercise, and physical fitness issues stemming from an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. We will utilize contributions to pay for targeted programs and other assistance.

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Nemours Health and Prevention Services (NHPS), based in Newark, Delaware, works with families and community partners to help children grow up healthy. Their goal is to drive long-term changes in policies and practices promoting child health and leverage community strengths and resources to have the greatest impact on the most children.

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KidsHealth is the largest and most-visited site on the Web providing doctor-approved health information about children from before birth through adolescence. Created by The Nemours Foundation's Center for Children's Health Media, the award-winning KidsHealth provides families with accurate, up-to-date, and jargon-free health information they can use. KidsHealth has been on the Web since 1995 — and has been accessed by about half a billion visitors. On a typical weekday, more than 500,000 visitors access KidsHealth's reliable information.

KidsHealth has separate areas for kids, teens, and parents — each with its own design, age-appropriate content, and tone. There are literally thousands of in-depth features, articles, animations, games, and resources — all original and all developed by experts in the health of children and teens.

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• As an ambassador for healthy children, Choosy wants to help prevent childhood obesity.
• Choosy is a role model who encourages healthy decision-making from all of us.
• Choosy assists parents, teachers, and health professionals by supplying consistent health messages.
• Choosy recognizes that preferences for food and physical activity are “learned” from others early in life.
• Choosy helps grown ups to intentionally facilitate movement and nutrition experiences of young children so that healthy preferences are reinforced early and often.
• Choosy helps to promote healthy messages and behaviors in homes, child care centers, agencies, and schools with lively songs, activities, and helpful materials.
• Choosy’s name is tied to his behavior, and his message is simple: Choose Healthy Options Often & Start Young(TM)

Kids ages 3 to 5 will enjoy these activities — from games played with balls and chalk to games that require just a few friends and some imagination.

Link from FamilyFun.com

Click to WATCH the the Region III I am Moving I am Learning video. CLICK on the image to the left for a real time streaming version OR DOWNLOAD video file (120MB) from the following LINK to view on your computer without an internet connection. Right click and select "save target as" to download to your computer. Open the file in your Windows Media Player.

Produced and created by ACF Region III Head Start and the Technical Assistance Network, ICF International

MyPyramid.gov

Use MyPyramid to help your preschooler eat well, be active, and be healthy. MyPyramid for Preschoolers is for children 2 to 5 years of age.

Click on this LINK to get a customized MyPyramid Plan for your preschooler.

I Am Moving, I Am Learning (IMIL) is a proactive approach for addressing childhood obesity in Head Start children. IMIL seeks to increase moderate to vigorous physical activity everyday, improve the quality of movement activities intentionally planned and facilitated by adults, and promote healthy food choices everyday.

• Dr. Linda Carson, Ware Distinguished Professor at West Virginia University (WVU), trainer for IMIL, created a child wellness character named Choosy who has become the signature feature of her community outreach programs at WVU, as well as a popular choice for the growing IMIL community. Dr. Carson, has assembled a team of expert trainers in a WV training company, Choosy Kids, who offer staff development training for early care and education of young children birth to five years.
  
• IMIL was introduced by Region III as a childhood obesity prevention pilot project in West Virginia and Virginia in 2004 and 2005.
  
• The West Virginia Head Start Association was the first Head Start organization to deliver statewide training focused on the IMIL childhood obesity prevention initiative.
  
• In 2006, Dr. Linda Carson of WVU and Amy Requa, Region III Head Start TA System, ICF International were the recipients of the ACF Partnering for Excellence Award.
  
• Choosy Kids was selected as the National IMIL training team to help raise awareness of IMIL strategies in all 12 federal regions.
  
• In 2007, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc released a preliminary report summarizing the implementation of IMIL in federal Region III.
  
• By May 2008, all Head Start regions have been introduced to IMIL training. These training events have reached over 2000 Head Start trainers, teachers and technical support personnel with a potential final impact of over 250,000 Head Start children being introduced to the three goals and strategies of IMIL.
  
• In May 2008, teams of IMIL facilitators from each region were trained in an effort to bring IMIL to every Head Start program across the country in an expedited way.
  

Meals and Food Program

Starting Small Mixed Age Preschool participates in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Nutrition and nutrition education is an important part of their child care. The CACFP monitors the meals served to the children, offers meal reimbursement to help cover the costs of nutritious meals and snacks, as well as education for child care providers.

Starting Small Mixed Age Preschool is also involved in the "I am Moving, I am Learning" and the "Choosy Kids" Initiatives that was created by Head Start as a way to combat the growing problem of childhood obesity.

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