Innovative Tools for Health Education: Making Inexpensive Props,
Visuals, and Manipulatives guides teachers in using inexpensive
materials as props in health classes. This book has 30 projects with
activity suggestions to make lessons meaningful, and it helps teachers
bring creativity to their lessons to keep students engaged in learning.
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If budget crunches have you down, this book will bring you back up. Innovative Tools for Health Education: Making Inexpensive Props, Visuals, and Manipulatives is the perfect antidote to those times when you are short on money (and on creative ideas) for your health lessons.
Author Marilyn Grechus has spent years creating materials—rather than buying expensive items from catalogs—for use in teaching her health methods classes and in workshops and conferences across the United States. Now she shares those ideas in this handy book, taking you step by step through the process of using everyday materials to create easy-to-make props for enhancing your health lessons. Through Innovative Tools for Health Education, you will learn how to
• use ordinary objects lying around your house as effective props in your class;
• bring creativity, freshness, and activity to lessons that keep your students engaged in learning; and
• guide your students through practical learning experiences that help them to understand health issues and concepts in new ways.
Innovative Tools for Health Education offers 30 projects (including Clogged Arteries, Breathless Cigarettes, and a DUI Game Kit) that engage and inform students about various vital health topics. The book also supplies ideas for using recycled materials as props and visual aids and gives guidance in buying low-cost items to use in your health class.
In addition, Grechus discusses how you can incorporate the props into your lessons, providing simple instructions with photographs of the materials you’ll need and instructions on assembling the materials to create your props. And because the materials are so inexpensive, you can make enough props so that your students won’t have to share or wait for a turn.
Each of the 30 projects comes not only with guidance on building the props but with activity suggestions to make your lessons meaningful and memorable. And because many of the ideas in this book can be implemented in other classes besides health, you can share them with your fellow teachers.
So if your budget is tight, just pick up a copy of Innovative Tools for Health Education: Making Inexpensive Props, Visuals, and Manipulatives and reenergize your teaching—at a fraction of the cost of other health education props.
1. Portable First Aid Kit
5. Health Balls
6. Stress Balls
7. Germs Under the Black Light
8. Alcohol Goggles
9. DUI Game Kit
10. Bottles With Impact
11. Breathless Cigarettes
12. Smokeless Tobacco Can
13. Homemade Phlegm
14. Tobacco Tar
15. Stinky Beanbag
16. Clogged Arteries
17. Components of Blood
18. Organ Vest
19. Model Lungs
20. MyPyramid Pocket Chart
21. Healthy Placemat
22. Simulation of Fat
23. Simulation of Sugar
24. Food Portion Kit
25. Portion Plates
26. A Pound of Fat
27. Fat Vest
29. Inexpensive Teaching Props
Appendix A: Patterns
Appendix B: Homemade Clay
About the Author
Resource for K-12 teachers, health teachers, elementary physical
education teachers, and university health instructors.
Marilyn Grechus, PhD, is a professor of health education at the
University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Missouri. She has taught
health methods courses since 1992 and has presented on related topics at
the state, district, and national levels. She has received two
Excellence in Teaching awards, one from the University of Central
Missouri and the other from the National Society of Leadership &
Success. In 2003 she received the Robert M. Taylor award for
professional service from the Missouri Association of Health, Physical
Education, Recreation and Dance (MOAHPERD). MOAHPERD also named her
University Health Educator of the Year in 2007. In her leisure time she
enjoys playing with her grandchildren and doing crafty things.