Health & Well-Being in Afterschool

Afterschool programs continue to make advances when it comes to providing students with nutritious foods, keeping students physically fit and promoting health. Such programs have great potential to help prevent obesity and instill lifelong healthy habits, serving more than 280,000 children and youth across Georgia, with 600,000 more who would be enrolled in a program if one were available to them. Check out the resources below to promote the health & well-being of the youth in your program.

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Cross-Curricular Resources

National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month Toolkit

This toolkit, provided by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, gives statistics on childhood obesity, outlines the impact National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month can have, and how you can get involved!

Kids on the Move Report

An America After 3 PM special report from Afterschool Alliance about health and wellness in the hours after school.

Healthy Eating and Physical Activity (HEPA) Standards

Evidence-based Quality Standards for providing children with healthy food, beverages and physical activity in out-of-school time (OST) funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and adopted by the National Afterschool Association (NAA) in 2011.

Georgia SHAPE

Georgia SHAPE is an exciting initiative to improve the health of our young people by offering assistance and opportunity to achieve a greater level of overall fitness. Georgia SHAPE also offers a number of resources for families to promote health & well-being including Fit at Home for Grades 6-8 and Fit at Home for Grades 9-12.

Get Active: Be Healthy Afterschool Toolkit

This toolkit from the Afterschool Alliance gives tips to providers to include physical activity in and nutrition education in their program.

99 Ways to Make Your Afterschool Program Even Healthier

This comprehensive list of ideas from CANFIT covers everything from promoting healthy eating to getting families and the community involved.

Out of School Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative

The Out of School Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative’s interactive platform features forums for participation in online discussions, lessons, tips, and resources for making improvements to your program, as well as access to research-tested tools to evaluate your progress.

Get Fit & Flourish: Enhanced Physical Activity Manual

This manual developed by Sandra Noel for the Illinois Public Health Institute includes lesson plans designed to teach the benefits of exercise and increase moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in P.E. class and afterschool settings, worksheets, and recipes for nutritious snacks.

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Physical Activity

The Afterschool Guide to Creating Outstanding Indoor Games

No outdoor space or the weather is not cooperating? No problem! This guide from the National Afterschool Association provides over 30 games to get youth moving and engaged while staying inside.

Grades K-2 Enrichment Zone Curriculum

These fun enrichment activities for grades K-2 were created by Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation to complement Energy Balance 101, the K-5 wellness curriculum developed in partnership with Discovery Education and SHAPE America for community and afterschool programs.

Grades 3-5 Enrichment Zone Curriculum

These fun enrichment activities for grades 3-5 were created by Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation to complement Energy Balance 101, the K-5 wellness curriculum developed in partnership with Discovery Education and SHAPE America for community and afterschool programs.

SPARKecademy After School Webinar Library

Check out these webinars from SPARK on everything from including all students in physical activity to planning a field day.

SPARK After School (AS) Physical Activity Program

SPARK AS is designed to provide children and adolescents ages 5-14 with inclusive, highly active movement opportunities that foster social and motor development while maximizing time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity and fitness pursuits.

Activity Calendars for Parents

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Nutrition

Georgia Local Food Procurement Guide for Child Nutrition Programs

Local fruits and veggies are healthier! Use these resources from Georgia Organics to learn how to bring local fresh food into your program.

Grow It, Try It, Like It! Nutrition Education Kit

Grow It, Try It, Like It! Nutrition Education Kit Featuring MyPlate is a garden-themed nutrition education kit from the USDA that includes hands-on activities, planting activities, and nutrition education activities that introduce MyPlate.

At-Risk Afterschool Meals: A Child and Adult Care Food Program Handbook

This handbook from the USDA addresses CACFP requirements that apply to At-Risk Afterschool Care centers.

The Afterschool Kitchen Crew: Healthy Snacks and Activity Guide

This resource explains why implementing healthy eating practices in afterschool programs is important and explains how your program can start a kitchen crew. The guide also contains recipes that require a minimal amount of kitchen equipment and activities that encourage healthy eating.

Webinars and Conference Calls on Breakfast, Afterschool, and Summer Meals

These on-demand webinars and recorded conference calls from the Food and Research Action Center cover a range of topics on breakfast, afterschool, and summer meals.

Breakfast Matters

1. Principal Champions for Breakfast After the Bell in Secondary Schools
2. Developing and Leveraging a State Breakfast Report
3. Successfully Framing your Breakfast Work for Media
4. Improving Nutrition Quality and Increasing Participation in Your Breakfast Program
5. Piloting and Expanding Breakfast After the Bell
6. Breakfast for Learning: How Education Groups are Joining Efforts to Improve the Learning Environment through Increased Access to School Breakfast (Aug 19, 2014)
7. Breakfast for Health and Learning Research Update (May 8, 2014)

Afterschool Meals Matter

1. How to Operate a Sustainable and Financially Viable Afterschool Meal Program
2. Providing Quality Programming at your Afterschool Meal Program
3. Marketing Your Afterschool Meal Program
4. Serving Meals on Weekends and During School Holidays
5. Building Community Partnerships
6. Back to School: Afterschool Meals 101
7. Improving the Nutrition Quality of Afterschool Sites
8. Working with Your School Nutrition Director
9. Evaluating your Afterschool Meal Program
10. Making the Transition from Afterschool to Summer Meals
11. Building Stronger Summer and Afterschool Meal Programs in your City

Summer Meals Matter

1. Partnerships to Expand your Summer Outreach Efforts
2. Serving Meals at Farmers Markets and Incorporating Local Produce into Your Summer Meal Program
3. Summer Meals at Libraries
4. Building a Summer Meals Workgroup
5. Engaging Elected Officials
6. Debriefing Summer and Setting the Scene for Next Year
7. Year Round Meals: Transitioning to CACFP
8. Maintaining Momentum and Spike Events
9. Using Data to Expand and Promote Summer Meals
10. Outreach Strategies to Families
11. Broadening your Summer Meal Program with Activities and Weekend Meals
12. Healthier Meals and Healthier Vendor Relations
13. Budgeting for a Sustainable Summer Nutrition Program
14. Transportation Solutions and Serving Rural Communities
15. FRAC Summer Food Mapper: A User’s Guide

CACFP

1. New Spanish Language Nutrition and Wellness Resources for Child Care / Nuevos recursos en español para el Programa de Asistencia Alimenticia para Niños y Adultos (por sus siglas en inglés, “CACFP”)
2. New Proposed Healthier CACFP Meal Standards: What You Need to Know
3. New USDA Recipes for Healthy Kids and CACFP Crediting Guide: Supporting Healthy Eating in Child Care

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 Mental, Emotional, & Social Health 

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (Resources and Training)

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports have been shown to improve school climate. This site has resources to implement PBIS including topics on bullying prevention and reducing bias in discipline.

Ten Activities to Improve Students’ Self-Concepts

This Education World resource includes ten simple projects that help preserve individuality and promote self-esteem among youth.

Assessing Self-Regulation: A Guide for Out-of-School Time Program Practitioners

This brief discusses the important role out-of-school time programs can play in efforts to build and improve self-regulation capacity of children and youth.

Teaching Tolerance (Resources & Curriculum)

Self-reflection is crucial to teaching and learning. These self-directed activities and readings will help providers explore, refine and improve classroom methods. Topics include racism and white privilege, and teaching tolerance’s Anti-bias Framework.

Afterschool Programs That Follow Evidence-Based Practices to Promote Social and Emotional Development are Effective

This brief summarizes the findings from research which indicated that afterschool programs that follow four evidence-based practices are successful in promoting young people’s personal and social development.

Ready for Work? How Afterschool Programs Can Support Employability Through Social and Emotional Learning

This brief defines employability skills with a focus on social and emotional competencies and presents research on why they are important. The brief also shares how social and emotional learning programs and practices can support the development of these skills and how afterschool learning setting are an idea place for this.

Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework (Recorded Webinar)

Researchers from CCSR discuss the findings of their newly released report funded by The Wallace Foundation that provides evidence from child/youth development, cognitive science, psychology, and learning theory that educators, out-of-school time practitioners, policymakers, and funders can use to ground their work in a firm understanding of important goals for human development.

Child Trauma Toolkit for Educators

This toolkit provides educators with trauma facts, suggestions, the psychological and behavioral impact of trauma, information on childhood traumatic grief and self-care for educators. It also includes resources for parents including a guide for understanding child traumatic stress and information on childhood traumatic grief.

Supporting Social and Emotional Development Through Quality Afterschool Programs

This brief provides an overview of work done to define social and emotional learning, shares research on how afterschool programs can help develop these competencies, and offers next step recommendations to practitioners and researchers.

Effective Practices to Cultivate Social and Emotional Learning in the Middle and High School Years

This webinar provides afterschool providers with guidance on how to integrate and implement strategies that create environments for social and emotional learning. The webinar will focus on how to apply what is known from programs that effectively teach social and emotional learning to your own work at you out-of-school time program.

The Impact of After-School Programs That Promote Personal and Social Skills

This paper seeks to address two questions, what types of outcomes can we expect from afterschool programs that attempt to foster young people’s personal and social skills and can we identify program characteristics that are associated with better results?

Assessing Self-Regulation: A Guide for Out-of-School Time Program Practitioners

This paper explores the role that out-of-school time program can play in helping children learn to regulate their emotions.

Six Tips for Teaching Social and Emotional Skills After School

This resource, based on best practices, provides a list of strategies for teaching social and emotional learning in the afterschool setting.

Social and Emotional Learning Practices: A Self-Reflection Tool for Afterschool Staff

This tool can help afterschool providers reflect upon their social and emotional competencies and their ability to support social and emotional learning through program practices.

Assessing Stress in Children and Youth: A Guide for Out-of-School Time Program Practitioners

This guide from Child Trends is designed to help out-of-school program practitioners recognize and reduce the risk consequences such as negative health and behavior development from stress.

Afterschool Programs That Follow Evidence-Based Practices To Promote Social And Emotional Development Are Effective

Sexual Health

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Substance Abuse Prevention

Youth Involvement in Prevention Programming

This Advocates for Youth publication discusses effective youth involvement in youth development/sexual health programming.

Meth Prevention Lesson from the Georgia Meth Project

The Meth Prevention Lesson provides teens in middle and high schools with the facts, tools, and resources to understand the risks of methamphetamine and to influence their peers. This standard-based lesson leverages MethProject.org and provides teachers with engaging, easy-to-use materials to lead a 45-minute class.