Customize Health for Your Community! With a Healthy Hydration Event

March 6, 2020 By Leave a Comment

SPOTLIGHT: Apples PTA (Stamford, Connecticut)

This blog post is part of a series authored by local PTA leaders who received a Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. They share practical advice and lessons learned from planning and hosting their events.

The Healthy Hydration Program is a great way to promote drinking water and infused water to students and families. The program can be coupled with so many different types of events such as a Healthy Lifestyles Night or a Field Day. Since we at APPLES PTA serve a preschool, our students are three and four-years old, so it was important that we made the event as fun and engaging as we could.

Our kids loved testing the infused water! I think they really enjoyed the novelty of the little cups and pouring out of the large five-gallon infused waters. The fan favorite was Strawberry-Basil (I was surprised since basil is a strong taste).

With the help of our school’s administration, we got the word out for the Healthy Lifestyles Night via a flyer that was sent around to families by print in the student backpacks and electronically through the teacher distribution lists. Our principal was super supportive, as usual. We have a Facebook group where we posted an announcement of the night and reminders as we got closer to the date. We also sent out emails to our PTA Membership distribution list to announce the event and send reminders.

In marketing the event, I would recommend starting two weeks prior. Two weeks gives enough notice while still staying in the forefront for families because, let’s be honest, families are all running around just trying to keep up most of the time. If you do it too early, it can become background noise and compete for families’ attention against other PTA happenings you may have going on.

The biggest obstacle for us was finding volunteers. Our school administration saved the day and got the teachers heavily involved in staying for the event and running stations. We couldn’t have done it without their help!

Now for the event! We wanted to highlight the physical, nutritional and hydration parts of a Healthy Lifestyle. In order to best manage the crowd, we split them up into three groups and held the event in three rooms that rotated. We had a cooler in each room with bottled water for anyone to take from.

In one room, we had kid Zumba with a table that had fruit and veggies in the shape of a rainbow with the sign “Eat the Rainbow”. In another room, we had a fun and engaging nutrition workshop where the kids were taught about what should be on their plate. Last but not least, we had a hydration room! This room featured the Sugary Beverage Station and Infused Water Station. We also added a ring toss with bottled waters where the kids could win a variety of healthy prizes.

As a thank you gift for families that attended, we passed out gift bags that included an infuser for water, a bottle of water, and a day pass to a local children’s museum. We also raffled off play balls and little soccer balls to the kids on their way out. All this spring boarded from the Healthy Hydration Program! My advice: You can make it as big or small as works best for your school.

Take Action:

Authored by Valentina Conetta from APPLES PTA in Stamford, Conn.

Disclosure: Nestlé Waters North America is a Proud National Sponsor of National PTA and a Founding Sponsor of National PTA’s Healthy Lifestyles Initiative. The local PTA spotlighted in this blog was a winner of a 2019–2020 Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. The author was not compensated for this blog post and the author’s opinions are their own.

 

 

Filed Under: Education News, Family Engagement, Health and Safety, PTA Spotlights, Slider Tagged With:

Fun for the Whole Family! At a Healthy Hydration Event

March 4, 2020 By Leave a Comment

SPOTLIGHT: Dufief Elementary PTSA (North Potomac, Md.)

This blog post is part of a series authored by local PTA leaders who received a Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. They share practical advice and lessons learned from planning and hosting their events.

Incorporating a Healthy Hydration Event into our PTA calendar was so easy! We hosted a Bike Rodeo and simply added the Healthy Hydration Stations at our event. Our school is in the middle of a very suburban walkable and bikeable neighborhood.

Although there are many students who ride their bikes casually, we wanted to provide a forum to spread safety tips about biking safely on neighborhood streets including how to be seen and following the rules of the road when biking on the street. We partnered with Montgomery County Safe Routes to School, who provided several loaner bikes and helmets for the event so the students without their own bikes and helmets could still attend, participate and enjoy the event.

To market our event to both students and parents we used our PTA newsletters, made announcements at our PTA meetings, posted on our website and to our PTA Facebook page. To reach students outside of our PTA members, we made morning announcements at the school and sent home backpack fliers.

We set up our welcome table, along with the Healthy Hydration Sugary Beverage Station, outside the entrances to our all-purpose room and gymnasium. We were a little nervous about attendance since the Rodeo took place during a short week before the Thanksgiving holiday. However, we had so many parents and students show up, that we had to extend the event to the blacktop outside the school, in addition to using the school gymnasium! Next time, we’d love to plan this event at a time of year when we could utilize outdoor space.

Our principal, Mr. Gregg Baron, was incredibly supportive. In addition to including the event in the school morning announcements and his weekly newsletter, he also attended the event, put on a helmet, and jumped on a bike, leading some of the students in the activities. His engagement and enthusiasm were infectious. He really made both students and parents feel welcome and excited to be at the event.

We would definitely consider having a Healthy Hydration event as part of our Back-to-School picnic, spring outdoor Dragon Fest, or other large activities in the future. We had a lot of positive feedback about the fruit-infused water from both parents and students. They were surprised that the only thing added to the water was fruit! In addition to the stations, we plan to incorporate and serve water at all our upcoming events in a more intentional way including our Math Night, Talent Show evening and family Game Night.

We had many parents and students express surprise at how much sugar was in common beverages. Adults were extremely enthusiastic about the fruit-infused water, and several took the recipes home with them. The hands-down favorite was the Lemon/Lime water.

Here are our top recommendations when hosting your Healthy Hydration event, from one PTA leader to another!

  1. Make sure that you leave ample time and space in your event for students and parents to visit the Hydration Station.
  2. Make sure to encourage parents to try the fruit-infused waters as well. We found parents were often the most interested in trying the different types of waters initially, which led to more children wanting to try the recipes.
  3. Consider encouraging parents and students to bring water bottles to the event to fill up on any leftover flavored water after the event!
  4. Think carefully about how to manage sign-ins, photo releases and follow-up surveys. We found it challenging to manage this aspect when so many attendees were eager to participate in activities right away.

Take Action:

Authored by Jamie Pflasterer from Dufief Elementary PTSA in North Potomac, Md.

Disclosure: Nestlé Waters North America is a Proud National Sponsor of National PTA and a Founding Sponsor of National PTA’s Healthy Lifestyles Initiative. The local PTA spotlighted in this blog was a winner of a 2019 –2020 Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. The author was not compensated for this blog post and the author’s opinions are their own.

 

Filed Under: Education News, Family Engagement, Health and Safety, PTA Spotlights, Slider Tagged With:

Focus on Health with a Healthy Hydration Event

February 26, 2020 By Leave a Comment

SPOTLIGHT: Cumberland Trace Elementary School PTA (Bowling Green, Ky.)

 This blog post is part of a series authored by local PTA leaders who received a Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. They share practical advice and lessons learned from planning and hosting their events.

When I saw the opportunity to apply for the Nestlé Waters Healthy Hydration Program Grant through National PTA, I jumped at the opportunity. I knew winning the grant could help open a pathway for Cumberland Trace Elementary PTA to host a healthy lifestyles event at our school in Bowling Green, Ky!

Like most PTAs, we host lots of events, but rarely are they solely focused on health. We decided to hold our event during a time when many parents would be at our school anyway: our annual Thanksgiving lunch! This ended up working out perfectly because we were able to reach many parents and grandparents as they came to eat lunch with their students. We set up our Healthy Hydration Stations in the “holding area” where parents waited for their students and they were all really happy to try all of our infused water choices and to take a bottle of water with them to lunch.

We also included a display showing how much sugar is in other drinks and we had information about local outdoor activities families could go do together. The entire event came together very nicely and what was really great about it was we gave kids and parents new ideas on how to make their water fun at home!

Several of the recipes we used were unique—strawberry basil, cucumber mint and orange blueberry—and several parents said they never would have thought to put them in their water and looked forward to trying it at home. The kids really liked trying the different flavors, too; it was fun for them to try to mix and match. Strawberry basil was the clear winner with the younger set.

We had many teachers attend the event, which was another plus to hosting it during the school day. Many of them came by and were able to fill up their reusable water bottles with the infused water!

The only real cost involved for us was buying all the fruit, cups, napkins, dispensers and printing recipes and other information. The bottles of water and signage were all provided by National PTA and Nestlé Waters. Leading up to the event, I created a flyer, which we sent home to every student and posted on social media sites. We also included it in the school’s newsletter.

Initially, I thought I would love to see this become part of a larger event that the PTA hosts in the evening, but now that we held it during the school day, I think we were able to reach a larger audience and would absolutely do it again. Many students who probably have never had infused water were able to try it and learn that water can taste really great! To me, seeing their little surprised faces as they tasted water in a new way was the best part.

Take Action:

 

Authored by Becky Durkee from Cumberland Trace Elementary School PTA in Bowling Green, Ky.

Disclosure: Nestlé Waters North America is a Proud National Sponsor of National PTA and a Founding Sponsor of National PTA’s Healthy Lifestyles Initiative. The local PTA spotlighted in this blog was a winner of a 2019–2020 Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. The author was not compensated for this blog post and the author’s opinions are their own.

 

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Making Drinking Water Fun! With a Healthy Hydration Event

February 19, 2020 By Leave a Comment

SPOTLIGHT: Pope PTA (Puyallup, Wash.)

This blog post is part of a series authored by local PTA leaders who received a Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. They share practical advice and lessons learned from planning and hosting their events.

“Try new things ‘cuz they might taste good!” was the jingle I sang from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood as the masses of students taking their water breaks approached the water coolers. The signs on the water coolers piqued their interest as they realized they had a decision to make: Which flavored water recipe would they try first?

Being able to host the Healthy Hydration event was a much-needed boost to our school’s morale, as the beginning of the school year has proven to be a challenge. Our school building is being renovated and expanded this school year, so we are currently displaced to an aging building elsewhere in the district that has led to a host of changes for the students, staff and school community. The announcement of the event generated a lot of positive buzz around the school and the administration was very supportive.

National PTA selected our PTA to receive the grant funding in October, so we had to hit the ground running immediately to plan and execute the event to make sure it happened in November, which is Healthy Lifestyles Month. We attended an online training webinar and scoured National PTA’s website to use their online toolkit.

We also took advantage of our Washington State PTA membership benefit at FedEx to print off any and all materials. We wanted to be sure to reach ALL of our families, so we made sure to translate any customized letters we wrote into Spanish with the help of a Spanish-speaking PTA volunteer.

We ran the Healthy Hydration event in conjunction with our already planned fun-run fundraiser. We decided that a two-day event would work best for our school to limit classroom distraction.

On Day 1, we set up the sugar-beverage education table, a table to hand out free Nestlé water bottles to all students, and a recycling station with recycling infographics. We used the customized banner that came with our grantee kit to have students sign their names as a pledge to drink water. This event ran during the students’ lunch recess.

On Day 2, we ran the fruit-infused water stations during the fun-run event. We used the three recommended recipes: Strawberry & Basil, Cucumber & Mint, and Blueberry & Orange. While the students took their mandatory water breaks, we encouraged each student to try a new recipe each time, as they got to vote on their favorite with the conclusion of the run (Spoiler Alert: the winner was Strawberry & Basil!). At the end of the day, each student took home the recipes they tried to encourage our school families to lead healthier lifestyles.

Take Action

Authored by Victoria Treffry, Pope PTA Co-President in Puyallup, Wash.

Disclosure: Nestlé Waters North America is a Proud National Sponsor of National PTA and a Founding Sponsor of National PTA’s Healthy Lifestyles Initiative. The local PTA spotlighted in this blog was a winner of a 2019–2020 Healthy Hydration Grant, sponsored by Nestlé Waters North America. The author was not compensated for this blog post and the author’s opinions are their own.

 

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