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Reviewed Site: Dole-SuperKids

Site Content Area: Nutrition in relation to fruits and vegetables (plus fitness ideas; games & puzzles to support healthy habits; facts; resources; information; and articles).

Introduction:

The main sections of this website include: Super Kids, For Educators, Eat Right, Live Right, Nutrition Institute, and Social Responsibility.

Super Kids has a lot of different areas one can access, including video games, paper-pencil activities, puzzles, facts, information, resources, fitness ideas, recipes, music, comics, and various other links. 

For Educators has Lesson Plans, Resources, and Activities.

Eat Right includes a complete guide of fruits and vegetables along with recipes.

Live Right has several subsections: Fitness, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, Weight Loss, and Preventions, plus articles.

Nutrition Institute includes News, Superfoods, Food Facts, Dole TV, and Resources.

Social Responsibility is more about their company, which may or may not be a place of interest for our readers.
Community and Follow are the places you can go to get their feed or follow them on the various social networks available.

Navigation:

The navigation is on the top of the page for the main sections, then moves close to the bottom for the front page of each section.  Once you click on one of those links, the navigation for that section will be on the left side.  There are bolded main topics that drop open to more links for that particular topic.

The Look:

There is a wonderful array of color splashed throughout the site, making it pleasing to the eye for both adults and students.  The layout is crisp, with just the right amount of spacing between words, paragraphs, and sections.  There are a lot of brightly colored images sprinkled within the pages.  The site moves between pages quickly, making it an easy transition from section to section.

Features of the Site:

This review will focus on the kids section primarily but keep in mind that there are many, many resources available on this site worth checking out.

Under Fitness are Be a Fit Kid and Fitness & SuperKids.  These contain a list of fitness activities ideas, information about what it means to be physically fit, why it is important, and the best time to be active.

Recipes include everything from meals to snacks to desserts and more.  There are recipes available to try, a link taking you to serving size information, and a place to find a game about enzymes.

The Games section has many different games: Healthy Celebration Center, Catapult Game, Drop & Catch Game, Mia Mango's Recipe Inventor, Superfoods Secret Sleuth, The Superfoods Mighty Gobble Chomp, Word Find Game, and Vending Machine Mania.  I actually played the games and found a couple of them to be challenging to navigate in the beginning which only made the game that much more exciting and satisfying once I was able to successfully complete them.  Definitely a good way to reinforce content taught within your class.  My favorite was The Superfoods Mighty Gobble Chomp~very similar to Ms. Pacman!

Music…at first I thought it only contained the words to their songs but then I noticed the download link, which allows you to download it as a mp3 clip, making it very easy to incorporate into your lessons, especially since you do not have to make up the tune or try to figure it out on your own. 

Comics comprise of interactive crossword puzzles, PDF crossword puzzles, fill-in the blank comics, and coloring pages. 

Videos has a handful of clips, which downloaded fairly quickly and were short, which would work in a class situation without taking too much time.  The only thing I could not do was enlarge the playing window; maybe one of you can do that and share the directions with the rest of us!  There was a cartoon clip, a rap, a pop-40 type song, a soul (ish) song, and a choreographed dance (my personal fav!), which could be added into a Rhythms instructional sequence or as a warm-up.

Fun Facts possess different links, all leading to short and to-the-point statements regarding a specific topic. 

Encyclopedia is fantastic with the array of information shared.  Younger students could use this information for their research while older students could use this to assist in determining the best direction to take for a more detailed project.  It is also a great place for teachers to access as a tool to create excitement for a project or topic.

Conclusion:

There are so many sections to this site I was unable to write about each one, but that means there is a lot of cool information worthy of your time to investigate.  I was pleased with the breadth of the content, the graphics, and the user-friendly approach to the site.  I enjoyed this site as well as found it useful and am hoping you will find it just as valuable. 

As always, happy surfing!