The Importance of Modeling Healthy Behavior in an Early Childhood Environment

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In an early childhood environment it is important to create a healthy environment for children. The role of educators is to model good health behaviors for children to prevent the spread of viruses. In my opinion, the early childhood professional must model good health behaviors for children so they learn health behaviors at a young age and make them part of their daily routine. For example, children could learn at a young age the importance of hand washing to prevent the spread of illness among their classmates. According to Cathie Robertson, “ One of the teacher’s most important tasks is to help children form the good hygiene habit and hand washing, to ensure a healthy environment” (Robertson, 2013, p. 443). Educators can make this task fun for children by making a song for hand washing, because some children learn faster when they are having fun. Also, it is important to give children immediate feedback after proper hand washing, so they feel motivated and will keep on doing it. As educators we need to wash hands often to we don’t pass illness to the children or from them to us. By doing this we are teaching the students that this is very important in order to stay healthy.

There are three different health behaviors that I might model for children and their families. I believe these behaviors are crucial to ensure a healthy environment for children. The first health behavior is to cover the mouth and nose when sneezing or coughing with a tissue or using the upper sleeve to stop the spread of germs that can make children sick. One step that I could take to help children to adopt this behavior is by having a box of tissues in the classroom all the time and every time a child coughs or sneezes I will hand over a tissue and ask him to cover his mouth and nose with it. I also will explain why it is important to do so. I will incorporate activities that teach children how to cover their mouth and nose if this happens to them. Also, I will talk about this with the families to ensure we work together towards the same goal.
The second health behavior that I will model for children and their families is the importance of washing hands.

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