• There are many ways to create a healthy-heart bulletin board.big heart little heart image by cat from Fotolia.com
  
  Healthier school environments can result in healthier lives and great academic achievements, according to research done by the American Heart Association. The key to good health is good habits, and teachers can impact their students' habits. One way teachers bring attention to health issues and teach students about health initiatives is through their classroom bulletin boards. There are many types of heart-healthy-themed bulletin boards.
  
  

Heart Targets

• Place three large heart cutouts on the bulletin board. Label the inside heart "no fat," the left-hand heart "some fat" and the right-hand heart "most fat." Ask your students to bring in pictures of different types of food, including cutouts from magazine and newspaper advertisements. Instruct the students to place the food pictures in the appropriate heart based on its fat content. For example, pictures of fruit will go in the "no fat" heart, while pictures of French fries will go in the "most fat" heart.
  
  

Nutrition and Fitness Plan

• Give each student cutouts of a heart and a foot. Ask them to write down or draw pictures of what they can eat to maintain a healthy heart diet on the heart cutouts. Ask them to write down or draw pictures of different physical fitness activities they regularly do on the foot cutouts. Be sure to remind them household chores, such as vacuuming or raking leaves, counts as physical activity. Use this activity as a follow-up to a health discussion, and display the hearts and feet on the classroom bulletin board.
  
  

How Do You Help Your Heart?

• Create a bulletin board with the large title, "How Do You Help Your Heart?" Divide the bulletin board into three sections, labeled eating low-fat foods, exercising and dealing with stress. Give your students blank note cards, and ask them to write down specific heart-healthy activities they do on a regular basis. Include some of the American Heart Association activities such as the Jump Rope for Heart and Hoops for Heart. Put the cards up on the board under the appropriate categories.
  
  

Heart-y Recipes

• This bulletin board theme focuses on eating and cooking foods that are healthy and delicious. Design the background of the bulletin board using the USDA Diet Pyramid (bottom section: carbohydrates; lower middle section: vegetables and fruits; upper middle section: dairy and proteins; top section: fats, oils and sweets). Ask the children to bring in their favorite healthy food recipes on note cards. Place the note cards in the correlating pyramid section.