Healthy Alternatives for Little Ones (HALO) is a 12-unit holistic health and substance abuse prevention curriculum for children ages 3-6 in child care settings. HALO is designed to address risk and protective factors for substance misuse and other health behaviors by providing children with information on healthy choices. The program aims to help children understand the complexities of "health" and "healthy choices" by putting these abstract concepts into concrete terms they can understand. In HALO, health is defined as "growing bigger, stronger, and better able to think."

The curriculum encourages healthy eating, exercise, and emotion recognition and educates children about the harmful effects of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD) on the body. HALO provides learning opportunities for children through teacher- led, developmentally appropriate, and fun hands-on activities that involve educational songs, videos, group activities, and books. HALO achieves this goal by meeting the following objectives: children will, strengthen their sense of self or identity, increase acceptance of cultural diversity, practice communication skills, begin to recognize and understand feelings, learn about major internal organs and their functions, begin to recognize drugs in their various forms, obtain information about the harmful effects of drugs, learn safety precautions for medicines, practice techniques to reduce stress, learn that eating healthy and exercise is important to stay healthy.

Question? Please contact Julia Zabludovsky (jzabludovsky@cafsnj.org) or call 201-316-0193