Fun School Assembly

Funny Debbie Banana Teaches Kids To Eat 5-A-Day.

Today, I am presenting the school assembly Debbie Banana And The Mad Scientist 4 times. The Coudersport Elementary School in Coudersport, Pennsylvania invited me to present two assemblies to the students and two to the parents coming this evening to the parent teacher night. In this hilariously funny assembly, Debbie Banana teaches the kids that they will grow up to be healthy when they eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day. The Mad Scientist teaches them what is really in that box of macaroni and cheese. The evening events will be a short, adult version of the same assembly, Debbie Banana And The Mad Scientist.

All Schools Have Wellness Guidelines

The state of Pennsylvania, like most other states, has wellness policies for schools. One of the policies in PA is that all of the schools are required to have wellness committees that plan, organize and provide wellness education for students, staff and parents. It amazes me how many schools can not afford to have Debbie Banana come to assist them in that process. Other school districts, some in that appear to be less privileged districts seem to find the funds necessary to give the students the information they need to live healthier into adulthood. I would think that wellness education of children would be a priority everywhere.

Wellness is not a choice!

The health and wellness of students is not a choice that should be taken lightly. For a child who is not healthy, a good education in math or science is basically useless. I don’t understand why faculty and parents put off health in favor of other parts of education. I am really impressed with several of the school districts that I am working with such as Coudersport Elementary and York City Schools, who choose to find the funds to invest in the most important part of their children’s education, health.

Educated Kids Make Good Choices

Today, after the assemblies, I had two kids from the older grades come up to me and say that they are never eating macaroni cheese in a box again! The Mad Scientist mixes up a batch of macaroni using the chemicals that are in that box of yellow chemical concocted stuff. They had no idea that there were so many chemicals in it and now they do. These kids, about the age of 12 have decided to ask Mom to make scratch macaroni using the recipe that Debbie Banana gave them. They are willing to try a home made whole wheat recipe! If those two kids are the only ones who make a change in the way they think because of my presentation, then my day was a success. I am certain that everyone in the room will remember the assembly for the rest of their lives and it will impact their future at some point.

Kids Love Snacks

Debbie Banana loves snacks and so do the kids. Debbie Banana teaches the kids to eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day. She also teaches choices. Life is all about making little choices that will affect you all your life. Kids love snacks. Snacks, even chips and tortillas can be good-for-you choices. Debbie Banana talks about the difference between good chips and bad chips. Some chips or tortillas are full of sugar and chemicals and some are not. There are good chips and there are bad chips. Life is about choices! We can choose healthy snacks, fruits or vegetables or we can choose good chips. As I typed this article a young boy named Cole came up and sat next to me. Cole appears to be about 6 or 7. He said that he likes fruit and now that he knows fruits and vegetables will help him to live a better life and grow up healthy so he can be an astronaut he has decide that he is going to try to eat more vegetables. He said the banana thing was really funny and everyone was laughing there heads off. (I hadn’t noticed!)

Kids Learn More When They Have Fun!

Debbie Banana And The Mad Scientist is not your typical boring school assembly. Kids have fun, laugh and get involved. Everyone buys, learns and invests in life based on their emotions. When an assembly engages the kids the way this one does, they have fun in school and become emotionally involved. This creates an immediate impact in their lives now and for the future. My mission is to change the way kids eat now and into the future. I made good progress toward that goal today. Let’s see if I can do the same tonight with the parents in half the time!!?

Principles Prioritize Students’ Healthy

Congratulations to Coudersport Elementary School principle, Sherry Cowburn for putting a priority on the wellness of their students! There is nothing more important for the future of kids than their health. When more schools and school principles see the importance of wellness education, we will begin to reverse the epidemic in childhood disease and obesity. Mrs. Cowburn, Coudersport Elementary School and the staff are ahead of the majority of schools in Pennsylvania. Congratulations Coudersport! Click HERE for more info on Debbie Banana.

Personal Coaches For Your Kids

A new fad these days are personal coaches for your kids. The other morning on the Today Show they had a feature story about kids’ personal coaches. The story started with the fact that 80% of American children are overweight to the point of being obese. The focus of the story was about exercise.

It pointed out that less 6% of schools schedule daily exercise. Most schools have cut out physical education classes and many have cut recess as well.

Yes, kids need exercise

Today society encourages less activity. TV, video games, the internet, and the fast paced life are only a few of the things contributing to kids being overweight. When I was a kid we roamed the streets, woods, and countryside, creating our own phys-ed. We did not need a coach to get us active. We always had an adventure in the works. Today parents don’t let the kids “run around” like we did. The society of TV has publicized so many bizarre child abductions or gruesome killings that parent fear letting the kids out of sight. The fact is when you take out disgruntled parental abductions, actual statistics show that childhood abductions are down in the past 20 years. Allowing kids to be kids will do more for their health than a personal trainer. Left to their own devices kids will usually get about an hour of exercise per day on their own.

Do You Exercise and Eat Right?

Positive role models also contribute to a child’s ability to maintain proper weight ranges.
You may notice that most overweight kids live with overweight parents. Are you creating family time that involves exercise?

Eating right is equally as important!

The story on children’s personal coaches only briefly focused on healthy eating. This is far more important to healthy development than a structured physical education program for your children. You can read my opinions on food anywhere on this website, so I am not going to go into it here. Your best eating choices start at the grocery store! Frequently when I am speaking to groups about the food choices they are making someone invariably says they can not afford to buy organic food, or whatever quality food choices I am talking about. My answer to that is that you cannot afford not to. How can you put a value on the future health of your children? It is not a choice. Your kids deserve the best. Read some of the other articles and learn how to change the future for your kids through better food choices.

Life is all about choices!

The investment will pay off. You either pay for better foods now, or your family pays higher health care costs in the future.  Live is about choices. It is your choice. You can choose a personal trainer for the kids, chemical- and sugar-laden convenience foods, quality foods that sustain life, an evening in front of the TV, or a family bike ride.

Can’t afford it? Think again, can you afford not to make good choices? Rather than investing in a personal coach for the kids, consider a lifestyle coach for you that will affect the entire family’s future.

Call me for a FREE consultation. Deb 717.751.2793

Are Your Kids Starving?

Kids Need Good Nutrition

Our kids are literally starved for good nutrition! I do not understand what parents are thinking. Today I spent the day with my nieces and nephews. Four kids ages 5 to 16 years old. When I picked the kids up at 11 AM the Mom of 2 of them was getting ready for work and asking, telling, insisting that the kids have breakfast before we go.

First of all, breakfast happens when you get up, not 3 hours later. Second of all, they were having Captain Crunch cereal for breakfast. That is it! No protein, no veggie, fruit, or whole grain. Just plain old sugar coated cereal, with milk. This woman is a smart lady. She has a good job keeping the books, payroll and all of the finances of a thriving business. I can not understand why she thinks that Captain Crunch is a healthy strong-body-building breakfast for young developing children. No offense to the Captain, or anything, but the stuff is nothing but sugar, enhanced by some man-made vitamins. Just give the kids a spoonful of sugar and a vitamin pill and they would probably be getting more nutrition.

OK, so we are off with……..Aunt Deb for a day of fun. The weather is not perfect for the planned picnic at the park with a day of swimming and fun in the water, so we switched to plan B. York County, Pa is the home of factory tours. So we headed to Harley Davidson for fun in the motorcycle plant. By noon the 12 year old had a headache and wanted a soda and aspirin. I am like…….. “why don’t you have a glass of water?” She doesn’t usually drink water and an aspirin always works. After further discussion I found out that she gets a headache almost every day. I explained to her that we need to drink 6-8 glasses of water a day and that the first sign of vitamin deficiency is a headache. Long story short, after 2 glasses of water, the headache was gone! I had a jug of water in the back of the car and we all enjoyed water the rest of the day and munched on celery sticks (they were in the back too) off and on for the rest of the ride. I know that at first she thought here goes Aunt Deb again on that healthy stuff. I also know now that she is sold on the water taking away the headache, and will consider it an option in the future. Of course, the headache could be caused by certain chemically laden foods, but I am glad the water worked! Water is essential for all of our bodily functions, one of which is removing toxins from our body, so a chemically induced headache may respond favorably to water. Next time one of your kids gets a headache, give them a glass of water.

After Harley Davidson we wanted to eat. I gave the kids a choice. Red Lobster, Chili’s (I had gift cards) or any fast food (cheap) restaurant. I really did not want to go to a FF restaurant. I know that I can not change the way they eat in one day, so I always give choices. Thank goodness, they picked Red Lobster. I do not know why kids love Red Lobster. It would not be my first choice. It is certainly better than the FF joints! I always give them the liberty of picking anything they want on the menu and all four kids picked a real meal. The 16 year old had a salad and fettuccine with shrimp. The other three all had crab legs, two with baked potatoes. The youngest ordered a coleslaw and fries with hers. All the kids ordered a frozen strawberry-daiquiri type drink which came with whip cream on it. (more sugar and chemicals). The biscuits which were all white (and only a teensy bit better nutritionally than the Captain)were inhaled immediately. These kids were famished. I see this every time I spend time with them. It is because they are eating chemically -aden sugar-coated meals. Meals that fill them up and do not provide nutrients. They all ate every speck of food on their plates. The five year old even wanted a salad when she was done with her dinner. We had agreed to get dessert later at Rita’s. I am not surprised that they all ate well. Frequently, when I take kids out, I find that they are more than happy to eat right. As a matter of fact, most often they are eager to eat good-for-you foods, provided I do not insist that they do, or make an issue out of it.

Later, we had our Rita’s and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon, before dropping 2 of the kids off at Mom’s work. While waiting for Mom, they were encouraged to buy a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup to hold them over to dinner. I have no clue what dinner was, but you can be sure it was very convenient and most likely out of a box, similar to breakfast.

Had we had a beautiful day and gone to Pinchot Park as planned, I would have thrown some baked potatoes in the charcoal, had a watermelon, carrot sticks, grilled a turkey breast. In the past, my experiences have been that these kids say that they want yellow macaroni and cheese or McDonalds, or they say that they do not want to eat healthy foods. (they hear their parents say “Aunt Deb is a health nut” or something to that effect). Yet when I make a non-issue about it, pull celery sticks out of the cooler or just fix a nice meal and put it on the table, they eat it. It is a non-issue. They actually eat it as if they are famished. They eat as if they have not had a meal in months.

This is a huge concern for the future of Americans! The American food supply is poisoned. Convenience foods are sugar- and chemical-laden. Chemicals have no nutritional value and are addictive. Americans are the most over-fed undernourished population in the word. The society is overweight and starving to death. I know that many of you reading this are thinking that I am overreacting (my family does). The fact is that the generation of kids that are growing up now are the first generation of Americans to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That is scary. You may ask why? The answer is because these kids have been fed sugary-chemically laden foods from the day they were born. Theirparents on the other hand or older generations only started to consume huge quantities of these toxins as adults or young adults.

Concerns For Kids Today

I am really concerned about the future of my nieces and nephews. Any parent should be extremely concerned bringing children into the world today. I plan to make a difference in the eating habits of future generations. One of the ways in which I am currently making an impact is through school assemblies and teachers in-service days. Go to DebBixler.com to learn more about my speaking services. To see a news brief about the elementary school assembly, “Debbie Banana and The Mad Scientist” click here. The assembly is also available in a more mature version for high school age presentations.

Make Better Choices For Your Kids

You can make choices that affect your children’s future ability to prosper. Please do not hesitate to call or email regarding any concerns you may have about food choices. Click here to get a free recording of the solutions to the “8 Biggest Health Mistakes” most people make. Your kids deserve the privilege of good health.

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