Wisconsin Dairy News: Jump with Jill
Posted: Jan 23, 2012 6:54 AM EST
By Tiffany Yapp
DE PERE (WKOW) — Kids are jumping and pumping at Heritage Elementary School in De Pere. Kids are also being inspired to make healthy choices.
Performance and registered dietitian Jill Jayne packs a whole lot of nutrition into her long traveling stage show and she’s rolling it out to youngsters worldwide.
Now, enthusiasm is catching on in schools across Wisconsin. A recent stop at Heritage Elementary in De Pere brought the crowd to its feet, literally.
The Jump With Jill events get kids up and moving with catchy songs and fun movements. Catchy lyrics and cool dance moves prove more effective than simply stating facts. The strategy is empowering kids to make healthier choices.
Jill Jayne and twelve Bills players joined over 300 excited elementary school students at the seventh annual Play 60 Challenge Fitness Party for youth on December 6, 2011 at the Bills Healthy Zone Fieldhouse.
The Play 60 Challenge Fitness Party is an interactive fitness event that rewarded approximately 360 students (3rd – 6th graders from ten Buffalo Public and two Orchard Park elementary schools) that participated in the Play 60 Challenge this school year.
This school year, the rock ‘n roll nutrition show Jump with Jill reached 70,000 kids. Which means this Rockstar Nutritionist needs healthy food models that look real and travel well. Meet iWasaki, a California-based company that creates and retails mouth-watering food replicas. I found them three years ago when googling for a solution to my thrice broken celery sticks. Rather than stryphome or hollowed plastic that look like Fisher Price, iWasaki makes silicone molds of actual foods (this is why they are called food replicas and not food models), then creates a flexible and durable product by filling the mold with a resin. iWasaki supplies all of the fruits and vegetables in the show, including my fake watermelon. Usually a watermelon would weigh 15 pounds, and the resin replica weighs only a pound, enhancing my ability to transport it around the country AND make my messages resonate without the mess of real food – a must have for dietitians and health educators. In fact, if you could use some fake food, post a comment on this blog entry WITH YOUR EMAIL SO I CAN CONTACT YOU FOR YOUR MAILING ADDRESS to enter to win green beans and leafy greens from the Rockstar Nutritionist and iWasaki!
Check out their website! If you don’t see what you need for your next presentation, email Ron to send in your food sample and he can custom prepare your food replica!
WASHINGTON D.C.— Jill Jayne has accepted an invitation to a special reception with first lady Michelle Obama this October at the White House for her work with Community School District 300′s Healthier US School Challenge run. The reception will recognize the Illinois school district and others “that have been successful in fighting childhood obesity,” according to District 300 spokesperson Allison Strupeck. “This event will not only celebrate the success of school districts like ours, but also encourage and energize us to focus on this in the long term.” Jill Jayne, D300 staff and lunch provider Aramark will attend the reception Monday, October 17, 2011, at the White House.
“The physical and emotional health of an entire generation and the economic health and security of our nation is at stake,” Obama said at the 2010 launch of LET’S MOVE. Using grant money District 300 was awarded a $56,000 HealthierUS School Challenge grant in December 2009 to both assess and award its elementary schools’ current menus and wellness-related efforts. In January, Golfview Elementary School in Carpentersville became the first non-charter school in the state to earn the USDA’s Gold Award of Distinction, the highest level of recognition in the challenge. The district’s other elementary schools followed after all began serving a USDA gold-standard lunch menu and hosted presentations by “rockstar nutritionist” Jill Jayne, who performed her rock ‘n roll nutrition show JUMP WITH JILL in all 17 elementary schools and developed a series of entertaining videos for the district to educate its students and parents about healthy eating. This June, District 300 had announced last month that 16 of its 17 elementary schools met the HealthierUS School Challenge, putting a quarter of the Illinois schools with that distinction in the state’s sixth-largest district.
It’s WATERMELON DAY here at South Butler Primary School! Join the Rockstar Nutritionist and Mrs. Gourley’s first grade class to show you how it’s done.
With all the competition from unhealthy food advertising, we are constantly running a PR campaign for healthy food. And one of the ways you can get kids excited about healthy food is to involve them in your campaign. That way, eating healthy food doesn’t seem like punishment.
Use every opportunity to teach healthy habits. Instead of counting pizzas, we are counting watermelons!
Make healthy the norm, rather than the exception. When healthy becomes the accepted choice, everyone wants to do it. Incorporate what kids already know from other subjects into nutrition education to make healthy habits relevant.
Create opportunities for kids to be successful with healthy food. Let them pick it out, cut it, and eat it with you. Ask them to use all their senses like how it tastes, looks, and smells. It takes up to 10 tries for a child to accept a new food, so keep singing healthy food’s praises!
If you’d like to organize a watermelon day at your school, visit watermelon.org for tips, recipes and activity sheets.
[Read the press release "WATERMELON DAY VIDEO OFFERS JUICY WAYS TO BRING NUTRITION EDUCATION INTO CLASSROOM: Pittsburgh School Becomes Movie Set for Fruit-Filled Day" here.]
The Jump with Jill performance at a professional baseball stadium was a career highlight!
The We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition) Program, a partnership of Charles County Department of Community Services, the Charles County Department of Health, and Civista Health, invited the community of Waldorf, MD to experience the rock ‘n roll nutrition show for FREE on the first weekend in April. The stadium is home to the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.
Following the momentum of Golfview‘s Gold with Distinction which culminated with 22 live Jump with Jill performances and the viral video “Going Gold” on YouTube, D300 has applied for the HealthierUS School Challenge for all its elementary schools. To celebrate and assist other schools to learn from their efforts, D300 and The Rockstar Nutritionist are releasing a new video that describes how all of D300’s elementary schools took The Challenge! The video – “The Jill Jayne Chronicles: Uncovering the Case of the HealthierUS School Challenge” – stars many of D300’s own students and staff and is the second in a series of three to document their commitment to improving the wellness standards of its students. D300 now hopes to add another 16 schools to their USDA award status tally and to join the few existing other schools in the nation and the 14 other schools recognized in all of Illinois.
As National Nutrition Month comes to a close, The Rockstar Nutritionist goes out in style with the New York Jets! Jill sports her high calcium foods and sings about the benefits of exercise to support the NFL/Dairy Council Partnership, Fuel Up to Play 60. Students from Newark, NJ; Jersey City, NJ; and Brooklyn, NY came to train at the Jets practice facility in Florham Park, NJ. These students will become student ambassadors for the Fuel Up to Play 60 program in their schools. We were joined by former players Wesley Walker (’77-’90), Bruce Harper (’77-’85), and strength and conditioning coach Bill Hughan. All of us reinforced similar messages– eat breakfast, eat less junk food, and exercise more. I also emphasized the importance of “walking the walk” when you “talk the talk” as a leader.
“Jump with Jill” Rock n’ Roll Nutrition Show Coming to Clayton, Missouri on April 5
Clayton has teamed up with Chartwells and Fontbonne University to bring the widely-popular “Jump with Jill” program to Meramec Elementary School’s gym on Tuesday, April 5 at 6 p.m. The performance is open to all Clayton students and families.
The live concert about nutrition for elementary students is a fun, interactive experience that helps increase retention of important health messages. Created by a registered dietitian and musician, the show has been performed nearly 600 times for almost 100,000 children all over the U.S.
By using original music, movement-based learning and a compelling character, Jump with Jill uses the same tools normally used to sell junk food and keep kids sedentary into a powerful tool for teaching healthy habits.
The songs performed are the hit tracks from the show’s soundtrack, Get Me Goin’. The songs are set up and transitioned with kid-appropriate explanations of the song content. The topics covered include respecting your body, eating breakfast, drinking more water, getting enough calcium, exercising, examining food packages more closely and eating less junk food. The show is both educationally sound and completely rock n’ roll.
As National Nutrition Month comes to a close, The Rockstar Nutritionist goes out in style with the New York Jets! Jill sports her high calcium foods and sings about the benefits of exercise to support the NFL/Dairy Council Partnership, Fuel Up to Play 60. Video blog to follow!
Jill sports her high calcium foods for the NFL/Dairy Council Partnership, Fuel Up to Play 60
Jill Jayne, MS, RD, Rockstar Nutritionist, meshes her credentials as a dietitian and her experience as a musician to teach nutrition through entertainment. As President and Creative Director of Note to Health, Jayne creates interactive programming that fuses health education with music.
Clayton has teamed up with Chartwells and Fontbonne University to bring the widely-popular “Jump with Jill” program to Meramec Elementary School’s gym on Tuesday, April 5 at 6 p.m. The performance is open to all Clayton students and families.
