The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an activity‐centered health education curriculum on the attitudes of 4th, 5th and 6th graders in a small, midwest city school system. The program was evaluated in part by a pretest/posttest design in which 10 randomly selected schools received the health curriculum and 10 schools did not. Twenty‐eight (28) health belief model questions were used to measure perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness, perceived preventability and self reported behavior relating to general health problems. The results indicated that the experimental students, compared to their controls, were much more inclined to change their health beliefs and self‐reported behavior in a positive direction, regardless of grade level.