Guest Blogger Diamond Grant
This is a guest post from Diamond Grant, founder of ehealthinformer.com.
Have Kids? Get These Apps!
It seems there’s an app for everything, from pregnancy to getting in shape, making it easier for us to live healthier lives. For kids, we try to limit their screen time, but it’s almost unavoidable, so I figure kid-friendly apps that promote healthy living are the best kind to have.
Here are a few of my favorites.
Smash Your Food
This app cleverly teaches kids about nutrition and the dangers of salt, sugar, and oils to a healthy diet. Players enter their ages and exercise levels to get target consumption levels and then smash foods, such as donuts or cans of soda, to reveal their nutritional value.
I think the idea behind this app is very smart since it teaches kids not only to limit “bad” foods but to dismiss them too. By consciously smashing those foods, children associate unhealthy foods with a negative response.
To give this game maximum effect, it’s worth reemphasizing to kids why they smashed a food item and what was bad about it if they don’t appear to be grasping the concept.
The app does require some personal information about your kids, so be sure to take follow these internet safety rules. Then get to smashing!
Smash Your Food is available on all iOS devices, and the basic levels are free. If you want to add more items to the fridge to smash, you can purchase additional packages.
Super Stretch Yoga HD
This app is excellent for exposing kids to exercise in a fun and engaging way. Yoga is now a household solution for health and fitness, and the Super Stretch Yoga HD app is perfect with kid-friendly poses.
The app assigns yoga poses to animals, and kids can select animals to learn specific moves. Each animal has a video of children modeling a stretch. There’s also advice on when and where is best to perform the yoga moves. This helps get kids into a regular yoga practice.
Super Stretch Yoga HD is available free for iOS devices.
Nicolas’ Garden
Believe it or not, this app was developed and created by a nine-year-old named Nicolas who had a vision for teaching his friends about nutritional living, shopping and cooking! The app has recipes, ideas, diet information and much more.
I think the main benefits of this app are that it teaches children not only what foods are healthy to eat but also how to source them and prepare them too. It’s hard to believe this proactive and enlightening app was created by a nine-year-old. I think it’s beautiful.
Nicolas’ Garden is available free for both Android and iOS devices.
Apps for Healthy Living
After using these apps, my kids were far more mindful about their health and what foods I put into the shopping cart. They also paid attention to if we were exercising enough, which was amazing to see. It’s clear kids can learn something from apps and then use that information in real-world scenarios.
Give one or more of these apps a try today! They make it fun for kids to learn about food and health.
Author bio: Diamond is a health and tech blogger with a passion for healthy living. She enjoys spreading nutrition and fitness awareness and using technology to help her family be well. Find her on Twitter at @ehealth_inform.
Related articles on Eat Right Mama:
