Validación del material lúdico de la estrategia educativa basada en juegos para la promoción de estilos de vida saludable en niños de cuatro a cinco años de edad

Objectives: To validate the games designed to develop the thematic contents of the ludic pedagogical strategy for diet and nutrition of the program"Walking through the Magical World of Healthy Eating" as a learning-teaching method, for the promotion of healthy lifestyles in a preschool population with ages from 4 to 5; and to determine the fulfillment of the expected learning outcomes by the children. Materials and methods: This investigation was developed in two phases: the first phase comprised the development of the thematic contents with 37 children of the course Nursery A by using six games. For the evaluation of significant learning, an evaluation was carried out before and after developing the program. The analysis of results was done by a paired t-test. The second phase comprised the validation the following games:"Find the missing pair and win" (concentrate);"Building the train of Healthy Diet" (puzzle);"Nutri-Cards";"Nutri-Health" (bingo);"Nutri-rights" (lottery) and"Let.s arrive to the magic world of the diet" (stairs). For this purpose we selected 12 children, 4 parents, 4 people of the institution (3 teachers and the Head Master) and 4 professional nutritionist-dieticians in Bogotá D.C. Results: The average age was 4.6 ± 0.31 years old. Before the educational intervention, the average score was of 27 points above 50 and after the educational intervention it was of 41.2 points (p<0.001). The variables studied for the validation were: attractiveness, understanding, identification of daily actions, acceptance and induction to the action. Conclusion: In general, both children and adults accepted the games and contributed for their improvement.