Children, especially at younger age, often imitate parents and other family members. Therefore, you are the role model for him or her. If you don't want him or her have lots of soda, cookies or junk food at home, you need to stay away from it as well.

​​Take your kids food shopping. ​Yes, you might actually do this frequently, but to make it even more useful, let her/him draw or write the shopping list with you, find the items in the supermarket, and begin reading labels together. Teach them smart and conscious shopping! Yes, shopping this way requires a little more time, ...but isn't it our responsibility to educate our children about better food choices?

You can start preparing food involving your kids around age four. It's very exciting for them to touch food, and spread, cut, stir, etc. These are great fine motor exercises, and they learn about the ingredients, also, the interactions between elements and items. You can enhance these experiments by creating a simple, personalized cookbook where she or he can write down recipes and add the photograph of the dishes.

​Together or as a gift, create a Thank you Tree. In a clay pot, what you can paint and decorate, glue rocks or marbles around the tree which can be made from wires or twigs and branches. Little leaves, hearts or flowers from paper can be cut out in advance, with a string on each, where she or he can write things that she or he is thankful for.

Since health is not only about nutrients, another wonderful way to teach kids to appreciate things (which in turn will make them feel better about their lives) is the "Appreciation journal". Every night before bed, your child can jot down 5-10 things that made him/her feel happy that day. It can be any little thing. Even a smile from someone, or seeing a cute dog.

Do you have toy animals, characters, stuffed animals? So, why not to put them to use? Play a puppet show about topics that can educate young children about how to take care of their health. Act it out together, or wear costumes, and play make believes that way.

By photographing, or drawing, or cutting pictures from magazines, create cards that are doubled or cut these cards in halves. Play memory card game by shuffling the cards, then placing them in rows on the table face down. The players have to turn two cards face up to see if they match, either searching for the same card or its other half, taking turns. When two cards don't match, the next player's turn. If they do match, the player gets to take them and turns other two cards up. The winner is who collects the most cards when it's all gone from the table.

Getting up in the morning might not be that easy. To refresh the blood circulation which will ensure more oxygen transported to the cells, use a small, wet towel to rub the arms, neck, face and chest area. Very beneficial, few-minute-long exercise for every day!

Kids possibly daydream more than us, because they have more time. It's a crucial part of becoming a healthier, more successful person in all areas of life. "Imagination" games can be played in the car, at home, waiting for the doctor, or anywhere. Guide your child - especially when she or he is feeling down, or angry - to close the eyes, and try to visualize some peaceful or happy scene or event. Emphasize on the details such as smells, feelings of temperature, textures on the skin, (e.g. walking on the grass bare foot), sounds and sights. Afterward, she/he can even draw it down.

Believe it or not, brushing teeth will not remove all the harmful bacteria and acid from the mouth! Using tongue scraper is an effective way to clean the taste buds as well, and reduce the number of bacteria. This daily practice can aid with lessening food cravings. Model in front of your child how to use it, and allow her/him to use one, too.

Even if you do not own a garden, backyard or a balcony, you can use trays and pots to plant easy-to-handle herbs, vegetables, plants with your daughter or son. Working and tending to their mini garden will make them proud, and increase chances that they would like to prepare these vegetables or taste them in various forms.

With other friends and family members, it's lots of fun to arrange game-filled gatherings sometimes, when one can be the quiz master, and the rest of the group can compete with each other as individuals or pairs (or even small groups) in who can guess or who knows more about health-related topics. This can be done many different ways, one popular is "True or False?" type of questions, the other one is open-ended questions, with multiple choices. I will provide sheets of these kinds of questions, so you can print and use them for games.

Kids often run to the isles in supermarkets where they can grab boxes of cookies and cakes. Well, whether you are an excellent baker, or you are not (like me), you can find some simple recipes to make sweet dishes involving your kids who most likely will be enthusiastic chefs. Baking at home is always healthier than to buy or eat factory-made cookies and cakes. Those are full with chemicals and colors, preservatives and other additives that will damage your health slowly. The same is true for cooking.

​If you are good with video cameras, why not to make movies for your child? It's actually even more capturing and entertaining for him/her if he/she can hear your voice, his/her name called out often on the film, and she/he can see her/his home, toys, kitchen items, stuffed animals, or whatever you think could be part of the program. here is an idea: making up a story about brushing teeth, or washing hands often, or preparing healthy and wholesome meals at home using her/his dolls or stuffed animals as characters. When your child is older, it's great to engage her/him in the film-making process.

Young children have a hard time to express their feelings, and to deal with them the proper way. Using a feeling chart drawing various faces of various emotions, she or he could identify and show you more easily what she or he feels. It's important to let your child know it's OK to feel whatever way is, and explain acceptable ways to let out the steam or spill out those negative and/or positive emotions.

Exercising outside on open air and in sunshine as a family is essential part of helping the entire family to stay well. Try to find physical activities that you can share with your little ones. If you have other families to get together for this reason, it's another wonderful idea. It's also building a habit for your kids to make exercise the part of their every day life as adults.

Choose a fruit or vegetable each month or week that you discuss and prepare in different forms. You engage your child in preparing dishes from it, look at photos, get recipes from other countries, use them fro arts and crafts projects, such as veggie puppets, or stamping, painting and decorating it, etc., learn facts about them, and so on. Great way to show children the beauty of fruits and vegetables.

Kids are curious how the camera works. Why not to let them have their own machine and teach them to take photos of nature, plants, animals, sunsets, people expressing love, the beauties of the world!? By photographing the world around them, they will learn a lot about everything, gain respect for nature, understand it more, and appreciate it more. Gratitude is a very crucial element for happiness and mental/emotional health. Remember to collect their pictures into albums so they can view them anytime they want and feel proud of themselves.

Create simple board games by drawing the field where they can move forward with small objects like toy figures, or buttons, and on certain squares, draw a star (or whatever you choose). Whenever a player arrives on a star after rolling the die and keep moving forward, she or he needs to draw a card. These cards made by you with different questions on them about health, fruits and vegetables, how to take care of our health, etc. They have to answer the question in order to be able to go on in the next turn. The Winner is who gets into the finish first.

Teach your child to use a soft body brush to dry brush herself/himself, and explain that this is a very effective way to get rid of dead skin cells and other waste material. It also refreshes the blood circulation aiding oxygen and nutrient transported to the cells, and removing waste.

Writing down short term and long terms goals are important for kids, too, to become more organized and focused. They will learn and see more clearly what they want to achieve, and what steps will be necessary to take. Hence, have them include the major steps in their plans. What does it have to do with health? Nurturing dreams and achieving them has a great deal to do with health. It simply makes them proud, successful, strong, more relaxed, less stressful.

Nowadays, every household owns a computer, and students learn in school early how to use it. Why not to take advantage of this? Devote a notebook for doing researches on the internet. Call your child a scientist to make it more interesting and motivating. Choose a topic or few per week that are related to health, and let them find out things about these topics. have them write main facts down, they can even print a picture and paste it in. Older kids can do power point presentations as well.

Nuts are one of the most important part of a regular diet. If your child is not suffering of any nut allergy,  it's nice to crack nuts in shell with them. Great for fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, too. The nuts are healthier eaten this way than salted or/and toasted, sitting in a bag shelled months ago.

Another way of teaching your child to be more organized and focused is to buy or create (even together) a calendar for her/him, where she/he can jot down her/his daily and weekly plans of activities. Using her/his photos can make this calendar even more special to her or him!

Music and art heals......they say. Introduce various musical instruments and crafting activities to her/him, so she/he can try them and see which ones are closer to her/his heart. These activities are very relaxing. Besides, it's a fantastic way to express feelings that is essential for healthy emotional development. Creating something with their own hands has amazing effects on forming self-confidence and uplifting their spirits. See if she/he is interested in writing poems, or songs, music, creating sculptures or paint. For me, it was very healing when I poured my heart-felt pain and sorrow into poems after my father's death.

If you like to write a lot, like me, you might be up to to create a book for your pumpkin called "All about me". I composed chapters that were about life wisdom I want to pass on. The pages were made interactive, inter-woven with activities, fill-out-blanks, riddles, place to draw, etc. Some of the chapters like these: "your body, your health", "your hobbies...", "Open and share what's inside you!", "The power of your mind", "Why to exercise? How to make it fun?", "Your favorite colors..." (colors create moods, etc.). This book is personalized to my daughter, and teaches me plenty about her, also, she learns about herself a lot.

If your child is very excited about cooking, she or he could make her or his own cook or recipe book. I always tell everyone, all the recipes are created my humans just like you and me. Why not to try to create our recipes? Some people do anyway, but encourage your little one to do it, as well.

Children can draw, or cut magazine pictures, or you can make them playing cards with these techniques  to engage them in educational fun card games that are all about health and healthy life style. You can make up rules, or copy rules from other card games. The point is, you tailor it to your child's needs and what you want her or him to learn about more.

 This is a great website for parents to teach children about making healthier food and life style choices. Founded by David L. Katz, MD., MPH, FACPM, FACP.     ​​http://turnthetidefoundation.org/programs.htm

​http://www.askdrsears.com/  another great website is founded by Dr. Sears, the leading pediatrician in the US.