PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
During my final semester at the University of Florida, I was an intern at Baby Gator- a childcare development and research center with three locations on UF's campus. I was part of their Physical Healthy Interactive Training (PHIT) Kids program, where I taught the children different health topics each week and had a corresponding activity to go along with the lesson. I also worked with the staff and parents to encourage them to improve their health and well-being. The following are different projects I worked on during my time as PHIT Kids Intern.
WEEKLY LESSON: GERMS
As a Baby Gator intern, the first lesson I taught the children had two components: (1) hygiene and (2) minimizing the spread of germs. For the first lesson, I focused on handwashing; children aged one and under explored with hand soap bottles and paper towels while being read a story on how germs spread. The infants loved the sensory play of ripping the paper towels. For this same lesson, children between the ages of one and three learned how to wash their hands by having "germs" (sprinkles) put on their hands and washing them off. The children were surprised how much scrubbing was required to get the “germs” off their hands. After this lesson, they always held up their hands to show they had “no germs” whenever they saw me! For the second lesson, children aged one and under were read a different story on germs and played with foam germs. They really enjoyed these toys due to their bright colors and texture. Meanwhile, children between the ages of one and three learned about using tissues to cover their mouth and nose by playing "Pin the Tissue on Mickey." I printed out a picture of Mickey Mouse , and had the children tape a tissue over Mickey's nose or mouth to cover his germs. Every child was so excited to see Mickey, which helped them be attentive and involved in the lesson.
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NEWSLETTER TO PARENTS
A month after the start of my internship, I sent out a newsletter to inform the Baby Gator parents on the PHIT Kids program. I explained my role as PHIT Kids intern was to teach their children about various health topics as well as providing a fun activity to help the children learn and remember the information. Additionally, I described the four previous weeks of lessons. Involving the parent and making them aware of the information their children were learning helped ensure that these health lessons and behaviors continued after my instructional time.
STEP CHALLENGE
I collaborated with the other two PHIT Kids interns to create a challenge between the staff of all three Baby Gator locations. We created a needs assessment in the form of a survey for the staff to fill out, so we could get an idea of what the staff would rather participate in (results are located in the button below). A Step Challenge was chosen by the majority. Because one location was considerably smaller than the other two, the interns wanted to make it fair, so we only asked 16 staffers at each location (the number of staff at the smallest location) to take part in the challenge. I created a flier for the staff to learn about the benefits of walking, when the challenge would take place, and how they can increase their step count. I also created a tracker for the staff to write down the number of steps they took (document provided below). One challenge that we had to overcome was making sure every staffer had a way to track their steps. I made sure I asked every staffer taking part that they had a way to track their steps and showed them how they could track it on their device if they needed assistance. During the challenge, those who were taking part were very excited when they improved their steps or got over 10,000 steps a day. They encouraged each other and gave ideas on how to improve their step count, like walking around the stadium together after work. After the week ended, I calculated the total steps and my center walked 625,826 steps collectively. Due to unfortunate circumstances surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, the PHIT Kid Interns and I were not able to collect the steps from the other centers and finalize the results. However, I enjoyed collaborating on this project with the other interns, seeing the improvements by the staff as well as their excitement in taking part, and creating something to help the health of others.