Need 'Healthy Living' Activity Ideas for My Girl Scout Troop!

how about all the girls write down a " idea " of what their family can do to increase excersise and eating healthy and have them change it up and put one item on their back with tape. Have the girls go around and try to get the person to say what is on their back by having partners give clues..... Two up on the plat form at a time for all to watch. Once that Ice breaker is done, challenge the girls to go home and do the one thing for 2 weeks. Some ideas is family walking around the block for 20 min each night. Eating 3 groups of veggies and fruit each day....... challenge the family to consume 8 glasses of water a day and mark each with a check mark....things like that.

How about making tasty healthy smoothies?

blueberries
vanilla extract
soy milk or yogurt
bananas
ice

or
one spoonful of peanut butter
two bananas
water or soy milk
vanilla
cinnamon
nutmeg
ice

those are my favorites :) strawberry and banana is always good as well

Are you able to use a stovetop? You can teach them homemade applesauce with cinnamon and raisins. It is so easy and my kids love it. It makes the house smell amazing!

Can it be healthy in other ways, like encouraging family game nights? You could teach them a fun game to play with their family.

I like the idea of showcasing the theme for the group. Building a healthy snack, participating in some exercise together as a group as well as individuals is an idea.

I wonder if you could extend it by establishing the "Healthy 10 Minutes" for the rest of your meetings--some short exercise or establishing only healthy snacks at meetings. Show to them that "Healthy Living" isn't a one night event.

review what the body needs to do to recognize one is keeping the heart healthy (notice the faster beating, and explain how long it should be done)
yoga
aerobic exercise
dance (pretend to be flowers, etc.)
breathing (to reduce stress)
meditation (ways to deal with stress)
there are some fun catch the ball games to learn names or learn more about another person
play twister
go ice skating
go bicycling
have a field trip to a dentist's office

They might be a litle young for this one but as women we always need iron. But the best source of iron is red meat and red meat can cause cholestrol problems in some people. So you can show them that red meat is okay in moderation, better when combined with oranges because oranges have folic acid which we need to use the iron in the meat. And eating oatmeal and whole grain bread helps clean our arteries. And combining that with 30 minutes of exercise helps us to stay healthy.

Then discuss what is exercise. We all know walking, running, playing sports ect is exercise but so is dancing, yard work and shoveling snow.

I hope this isn't to complicated for girls that young.

We did this in our brownie quest. How about a yogurt bar? Let the girls build a healthy yogurt snack with yogurt and various healthy toppings.

We just had a Den meeting for my son's Cub Scouts and one of their achievements was healthy eating. We brought in some cut up fruit and veggies. We talked about the difference between a fruit and a vegetable, how much they should be eating. Then we passed out the fruit and veggies for the kids to try. We had peppers, cucumbers, carrots, pears, strawberries. Then we had the kids make some trail mix. Little sandwich baggies and we brought cereal, pretzels, nuts, craisins, m&m's. Also we gave each kid a paper plate and had them cut out a meal for themselves from magazines and glue them down on their plate.

The kids had a lot of fun too. The boys were all 2nd graders (7-8 years old) so same age group.