Nutrition and Health at SMS

Emerald Connection, October 31st 2022

Halloween is a good day to let you know that we have begun our nutrition unit, the first unit in our health curriculum this year.  Our school nurse, Audrey, began teaching our lower school health curriculum last week.  She visited the Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 classes to lead hands-on activities about healthy choices.

In the next few weeks, she will visit every class once and then begin again with our youngest students on another health topic.  Throughout the year, the focus is on helping students to understand and make healthy choices in all aspects of their life.  For those of you that are spacing out the Halloween candy over the next week, month, or year, you get the idea: assess the situation and make a wise choice.

As you talk about school with your family, please ask if Nurse Audrey has come to your child’s class yet and what they talked about.  This week, she will visit grades three to five.  Grades six to eight will get their lessons in the next few weeks.  Your follow up at home is a great chance to help your children recall what they are learning about and to think about how they can apply their learning immediately in their own lives.

As Audrey prepares to bring health topics into your child’s classes, she will not only bring her expertise as a parent, an educator, and a nurse, but she plans to bring in partner organizations and students from the high school.  As she plans ahead, if you have skills or expertise to bring to us and would like to share or if you know of community partners that may be good fits, please reach out to Audrey with your ideas.

If you haven’t visited our school website lately, take a look.  On the landing page you find beautiful images and two simple, but meaningful paragraphs.  Neither the images you see nor the paragraphs you read necessarily suggest the topic of health.  However, helping students to make healthy choices in all aspects of their life is very much at the core of what we do.  Exploring and challenging ourselves outdoors, connecting with and caring for others, and finding joy in life are all part of what makes the Steamboat Mountain School experience.  While our students will hopefully remember and use the math they learn in school, the lessons they learn both in the classroom and beyond about taking care of themselves and others will certainly last their entire lives.