KidsHealth
About this resource
- Appropriate grades
- 3–12
- Subjects
- guidance (general), healthful living (exercise and sports, family life and human relations, mental/emotional health, nutrition, physical health/disease prevention, safety, substance abuse prevention), science (biology and life science)
- Provider
- Nemours Foundation
- Special requirements
- Shockwave required for some animations.
Legal
This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.
The human body, emotions, growing up, staying healthy, people, places and things that help me... each subject heading has wonderful articles, shockwave animations to demonstrate concepts, and related resources are all interlinked. Created by the Nemours Foundation a nonprofit organization devoted to children's health.
Educator's guide
Practical, sound health resources on the Internet are hard to locate and even harder to evaluate. If you search the Web for health topics such as diet, exercise, or medical information your search will return hundreds of results from commercial websites offering weight loss products, exercise equipment and medical treatments. Even if you use your information literacy skills to sift through the commercial materials, most health association websites and reputable medical resources are designed for health professionals; the vocabulary is scholarly and the articles are long. If you have a question about health you need a dependable, understandable source -- and kids and teens need answers, too!
KidsHealth, published and supported by the non-profit Nemours Foundation Center for Children's Health Media, is committed to providing kids, teens and parents with the answers they need to the questions they have about health. The information on the site is "doctor-approved and jargon-free," and medical editors as well as practicing expert medical reviewers ensure that current and valid information is presented on all topics.
Not only is KidsHealth providing valid information, but the website is specially designed to engage readers whether they are children, adolescents, or adults. Approaching their audience through three different gateways means that a topic like skin care can be presented using age-appropriate language and focusing on age-appropriate concerns: younger students need the basics, skin as an organ and keeping clean, while teens are more worried about skin care for preventing acne. The article for teens explaining Mononucleosis begins with a story, embedding symptoms in a narrative a teen can relate to; the parent article presents much of the same information about the symptoms and treatments in a more clinical yet readable article. Every entry includes links to more information; the teen and kids sites have linked to "more articles like this" and the parent site provides access to like materials on not just the parent level, but also in the kids and teens sections. So, if a parent is reading Understanding Depression because they are concerned for their child, they can easily refer that child to the age-appropriate material from the Related Articles section covering the same topic.
Unique and powerful features of the KidsHealth site for younger students include animated movies, games and other multimedia and interactive approaches to health topics. Human body systems are explained in text and diagrams in the My Body articles, demonstrated in How the Body Works movies, and reinforced by activities.
Healthful living objectives are well covered on the KidsHealth websites, from healthful snacks for teeth and body in the early grades through self-esteem and body image in secondary. After reading and researching their topics, students can easily locate related articles on the site or use the additional resources (Resource Room in kids' version) to find reliable print, video or website sources for further exploration. Read about the origins of expressions like "sick as a dog" or "by the skin of your teeth" in the Kids' Talk section, or consider safety issues and first aid topics in the Watch Out pages.
