Healthy Kindergartens

Abstract

Pre-school period is extremely important in adopting individual health behaviour. Consecutively it is very important how to present health and healthy behaviour to the child. The project is directed to create conditions for children’s well-being and health, education for a healthy behaviour, and support of social and professional partners. At the beginning of the nineties, a project entitled »Healthy Schools« was launched by the World Health Organization to stimulate schools for incorporation of health promotion in their curricula and everyday life. Since this project was relating to primary schools only, similar project entitled »Healthy Kindergarten« was developed in some European countries. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the development, aim, and goals of healthy kindergartens, and as an example how the project concepts could be implemented as a routine. The first case study is presenting the development of the »Healthy Kindergarten« project in Slovenia, and the »Health in the Kindergartens« programme, the successor of the project, implemented as a routine. The second case is presenting an intervention tool in Hong Kong where children’s health status was found to be poor.