Worksheets Listing

The attached worksheets focus on life skills at the elementary level.  Life skills can seem like a pretty broad topic but the National Health Education Standards (NHES) help educators narrow down and understand what needs to be taught. 

The NHES focuses on what students should know by second, fifth, eighth, and twelfth grade in order to be healthy physically, socially, emotionally, and intellectually. These skills taught by the standards include everything from conflict resolution to healthy eating. 

While these skills come second nature to adults, it is important to understand that the skills need to be explicitly taught to children.  For example, it is obvious to us how to pick out healthy foods to eat, but if children are not taught what healthy foods are, they will struggle to make the decision. 

The worksheets focus on a topic that relates directly back to one of the NHES standards.  Below is a list of the title of each worksheet, the associated National Health Education Standard, the appropriate grade level, and a brief description of the skills taught by the worksheet. 

Worksheet #1: Healthy Behaviors

NHES Standard 1.2.1 – Identify that healthy behaviors impact personal health.

Grades: PK-2

This worksheet teaches students the life skill of healthy eating.  It emphasizes the importance of a well-balanced diet.  Students will identify healthy foods and then judge two diets as being well-balanced or not well-balanced.  This worksheet helps students understand how having healthy behaviors such as eating well will positively impact their health.  This skill is so important to be explicitly taught because children tend to want to eat whatever tastes the best without concept of if it is good for them or not.

Worksheet #2: Meal Planning

NHES Standard 1.2.1 – Identify that healthy behaviors impact personal health.

Grades: PK-2

This is another worksheet that focuses on the life skill of healthy eating.  The worksheet gives students a chart that contains healthy food options for each meal of the day.  After reading the chart, students get to plan out their dream healthy meals.  It is important that the teacher reads to the students the healthy foods in the chart as some of the words may be difficult for young children.  Picture support or regalia are good additions to this lesson as well.

Worksheet #3: Being Safe with our Bodies

NHES Standard 1.5.4 – Describe ways to prevent common childhood injuries and health problems.

Grades: 3-5

An important life skill that children need to be explicitly taught is how to be safe with their bodies.  Often times children are in their own worlds and don’t realize how their actions can be unsafe to themselves and others.  This worksheet has students read about a few situations and analyze if the child is being safe with their body.  At the end, they get to draw a picture of them being safe with their body on the playground.  This worksheet is especially helpful to the more active children in the classroom.

Worksheet #4 – Seeking Health Care

NHES Standard 1.5.1 – Describe when it is important to seek health care.

Grades: 3-5

This worksheet teaches students an important skill that will be necessary for the rest of their lives.  It focuses on different situations where seeing a doctor would be necessary and which type of doctor to see.  Sometimes even adults have trouble understanding when it is important to see a doctor.  If teachers educate children at a young age about the importance of seeking health care, they will be able to carry this skill with them for life.

Worksheet #5 – Healthy Technology Use

NHES Standard 2.5.6 – Describe ways that technology can influence personal health.

Grades: 3-5

Technology is embedded everywhere within our society.  Kids see it everywhere they go including at school and at home.  Students need to understand that technology is here to help them learn but if it is used in an unhealthy way it is bad for their wellbeing.  This worksheet shares a chart of healthy and unhealthy technology practices.  Students can analyze the chart and determine if their personal technology use is healthy or unhealthy.  After that, they get to draw a picture of someone using technology in a healthy way.

Worksheet #6 – Wants and Needs

NHES Standard 4.2.1 – Demonstrate healthy ways to express needs, wants, and feelings.

Grades: PK-2

An important life skill that children need to understand is the difference between wants and needs.  Children can get in the habit of telling their parents and teachers that they “need” toys or “need” candy.  It is crucial that they learn at an early age that needs are critical to survival while wants are things that they would like to have but don’t need to survive.  This worksheet defines wants and needs and then has students complete a word search where they pick out different wants and needs.

Worksheet #7 – Identifying Needs and Wants

NHES Standard 4.2.1 – Demonstrate healthy ways to express needs, wants, and feelings.

Grades: PK-2

This fill in the blank activity goes along with the last worksheet.  Now that students understand what qualifies as a want and a need, they get to identify various things as wants or needs.  This builds upon the importance of students understanding how to express things they need versus things they want.

Worksheet #8 – Conflict Resolution

NHES Standard 4.5.3 – Demonstrate nonviolent strategies to manage or resolve conflict.

Grades: 3-5

Conflict resolution is an important life skill that even some adults struggle with.  It is important to teach kids that conflict will happen and that there are healthy ways to resolve it.  This activity has students pair up and read a script together about two characters who get in a conflict and work together to resolve it.  This activity is very helpful because it provides students with a solid example of a kid conflict and how it was solved.

Worksheet #9 – Conflict Resolution

NHES Standard 4.5.3 – Demonstrate nonviolent strategies to manage or resolve conflict.

Grades: 3-5

This worksheet goes along with the previous activity.  Instead of reading a script, this time, the students get to make their own!  They will create a script with two characters who get in a conflict and find a way to resolve it.  This activity hits the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy because the students are actually “creating” solutions.

Worksheet #10 – Making Healthy Decisions

NHES Standard 5.5.5 – Choose a healthy option when making a decision.

Grades: 3-5

Both kids and adults are bombarded with decisions multiple times every single day.  Being able to analyze these decisions and pick the healthy outcome is a very important life skill to have.  This worksheet provides students with three situations where they must decide the most healthy option to pick.  It also has students write about a time they made a healthy decision.

Worksheet #11 –  Healthy Goals

NHES Standard 6.5.1 – Set a personal health goal and track progress toward its achievement.

Grades: 3-5

Goal setting and tracking is an extremely important life skill to teach children.  Goals are crucial to success in elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and in future careers.  Students should also be taught the importance of not just setting goals, but also tracking them.  This worksheet helps with this skill  Students set a goal to do something healthy every day of the week.  Then they use the chart to track healthy things they did each day.  This could be healthy eating, exercise, getting enough sleep, etc.

Worksheet #12 – Goal Assistance

NHES Standard 6.5.2 – Identify resources to assist in achieving a personal healthy goal.

Grades: PK-2

Part of student goal setting and achievement is knowing that they have people to rely upon to help them.  Goal setting can be very daunting to children.  This activity helps them brainstorm people in their life that can help them.  The worksheet includes a graphic organizer where they identify trusted people to assist them with their goals.  This could be parents, siblings, teacher, friends, etc.

Worksheet #13 – Encouraging Healthy Choices

NHES Standard 8.2.2 – Encourage peers to make positive health choices.

Grades: PK-2

Another important life skill for children is understanding that they can help others around them to make healthy choices.  This activity has students create a poster to encourage others to be healthy.  This could be about healthy eating, exercise, etc.

Worksheet #14 – Nonverbal Communication

NHES Standard 4.5.1 – Demonstrate effective verbal and nonverbal communication skills to enhance health.

Grades: 3-5

Students need to understand that communication is not just talking but that people communicate nonverbally all the time.  They should be explicitly taught that their body language communicates to others how they are feeling.  This worksheet provides different types of body language and students must decide if it is positive or negative.  This activity will help students to analyze their own body language and make decisions about what is appropriate for the situation.

Worksheet #15 –  Listening Skills 4 Square

NHES Standard 4.2.2 – Demonstrate listening skills to enhance health.

Grades: PK-2

An important life skill to teach students is that relationships are often built upon listening skills.  Explain to students that it is really hard to be friends with someone who is a poor listener.  During this activity, students complete a 4 square where they brainstorm listening skills.  Inside the squares they identify what a good listener looks and sounds like, who they should respectfully listen to, and when it is important to listen.

Worksheet #16 – Influence of Media

NHES Standard 2.2.3 – Describe how the media can influence health behaviors.

Grades: PK-2

In our current technologically advanced world, students are bombarded with media all the time.  It is extremely important for educators to explicitly teach students that the media can have both positive and negative influences on wellbeing.  For this activity, students will draw a positive advertisement for being healthy.  This will help them to understand what positive media looks like.

Worksheet #17 – Emotional, Intellectual, Physical, and Social Health

NHES Standard 1.5.2 – Identify examples of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social health.

Grades: 3-5

An important life skill for children to learn is that being healthy is multi-dimensional.  Our health and wellbeing is a result of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social aspects.  Educators should teach what these categories of health mean.  This worksheet provides multiple situations where students must identify whether they relate to emotional, intellectual, physical, or social health.

Worksheet #18 – Emotional, Intellectual, Physical, and Social Health 4 Square

NHES Standard 1.5.2 – Identify examples of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social health.

Grades: 3-5

This worksheet goes along with the previous activity where students learned examples of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social health.  For this worksheet, students will complete a 4 square where they will identify 4 ways they can be healthy in each category. 

Worksheet #19 – Preventing Disease

NHES Standard 1.2.3 – Describe ways to prevent communicable disease.

Grades: PK-2

Kids do not automatically know the life skill of being healthy and preventing the spreading of germs, they must be explicitly taught.  This worksheet has students identify times when it is necessary to wash their hands.  Washing hands is the best way to prevent the spread of illness and it a very important concept to teach children as soon as possible.

Worksheet #20 – Preventing Disease

NHES Standard 1.2.3 – Describe ways to prevent communicable disease.

Grades: PK-2

This is another activity that teaches the importance of preventing the spread of illness through handwashing.  Students will make a poster encouraging others to wash their hands.  It could be fun to actually hang these posters up in the school bathroom so that students could see their work encouraging others.

Conclusion

This packet of worksheets is geared toward elementary school students ages PK-5.  The worksheets focus on life skills that benefit all children and set them up for success as they go through the rest of their childhood and adulthood.  The worksheets tie back to the National Health Education Standards providing teachers and parents with assurance that the topics discussed are in line with a national set of benchmarks.  Life skills lessons should build upon each other and be reviewed frequently to properly be absorbed.