Developing Educational Games for Preschool Children to Improve Dietary Choices and Exercise Capacity

Abstract

This article describes the processes used to develop two different types of games used to improve the consumption of healthful foods and increase exercise in preschool Hispanic populations. They were created to meet criteria for effectiveness: age and culturally appropriate, fun, and foster family participation. The first, a pictorial bilingual food bingo game, emphasized vegetable and water consumption and the limitation of sugar-sweetened beverages. A population was selected to study the effectiveness in changing dietary habits, and we were able to show a significantly improved consumption of vegetables at home after using the game during the school year. Next, we developed bilingual video games used to teach nutrition and enhance exercise. The animal characters and narrative were created to allow immersion. The concept was that the animals needed the children’s help to obtain food, exercise tasks were assigned, and nutritional foods were discussed. Focus groups were reviewed for the effectiveness of the concept, ease of usability, and appropriateness for the target audience. The videos were tested in a summer session, and teachers concluded that after two viewings the children enhanced their exercise, bonded to the animals, and were answering the nutrition questions correctly.

A Multi-Modal IoT Framework for Healthy Nutritional Choices in Everyday Childhood Life

“…In "Dining Decisions" [42], the player assigns meals and snacks to three categories representing three basic levels of healthiness. A simple bilingual bingo game has been proposed to emphasize vegetable and water consumption and limit sugar intake [17] associating simple memorable rhymes with each meal and snack. Kurbo [43] attempted to engage young individuals through logging nutrient consumption and offering coaching based on manually entered data and lifestyle.…”

“…These games strike a balance between fun and educational content, providing feedback on performance and tracking progress to motivate children to achieve health-related goals [14,15]. Systematic literature reviews evaluating the efficiency of serious games in providing health education and behavioral changes against obesity as well as focused efforts, revealed the promising but yet-to-be-explored nature of the field's consistent benefits [16,17].…”

Applying Gamification Technique and Virtual Reality for Prehistoric Learning toward the Metaverse

“…There are various studies have been undertaken to implement educational games, one of them is educational games for early childhood education. Although the game results created have not been varied enough and the environments have not been detailed but the other educational games for early childhood education have also been created, but still on the Android platform [9,10].…”