Teaching health education without a formal curriculum is not as difficult as it sounds. Your local library and the internet can provide almost all the information you'd need to teach each of the ten basic content areas.
Here are some resources and teaching suggestions for the first four content areas. This post is part one of two health education resource lists that I'll be posting. I'll also be adding to each list as I find more resources. If you have any suggestions for additional resources for each area, please leave a comment.
Accident Prevention and Safety
- Read articles from The Centers for Disease Control on safety and preventing injuries and accidents.
- Take some online health and safety quizzes at the CDC website.
Community Health
- Find out about the community health programs in your county/state. Information about programs in my own state of Texas can be found here at the Texas Department of State Health Services website. Your state will likely have similar information.
- Read this article about how food banks work.
- Read about the American Heart Association, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, etc. Find out why and how these organizations operate.
- Field trip ideas:
- Locate your local food banks, plan a field trip to one, and make a donation of food.
- Locate local homeless shelters. Visit one (maybe even volunteer) to find our first-hand how they operate. Before you visit, ask what material needs they have and take a donation.
Consumer Health
- Read The Fallacy Detective, which covers many propoganda techniques used by advertisers who sell health products.
- Read some articles about alcohol advertising and the history of tobacco.
- Discuss what a snake oil salesman is. Look at some old ads for cure-all elixirs and health products and discuss the claims. Compare the old ads to the advertisements of today. Are they comparable at all?
- Read about the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and discuss its role.
- Discuss the difference between over-the-counter and prescriptions drugs.
- Learn the anatomy of prescriptions and drug labels.
Environmental Health
- Read about air and water pollution.
- Read about radiation emergencies.
- Read about sewage and waste disposal.
- Watch some videos about the water and sewage treatment processes.
This is just part one of the homeschool health education curriculum so watch for part 2.
Perfect! Thanks for this post! I have been biting my nails trying to decide on a Health 'curriculum' and your words "without a a formal curriculum is not as difficult as it sounds" is what I needed to hear 🙂
Thanks for posting! My 10th grader has finished her health curriculum from the publisher we use but I wanted something to touch up on instead of her just "skipping" these last 2 years of health. Great start for me to use! I greatly appreciate it!
I cannot tell you what a blessing this site was to me today. I am rushing to cram our 0.5 credit for health this year and with your site I was given ideas to achieve our goal. I am not really impressed with many of the standard Health curriculums but with these resources I can pick and chose PER TOPIC. Thank you from a weary mother! 😉