Healthy Alternatives for Little Ones

Empowering young children to make healthy choices.

HALO Overview

Healthy Alternatives for Little Ones is an developmentally appropriate health education and prevention program for 3-6 year-old children. It is designed to provide information and to help children build skills for growing up in healthy ways.

Through HALO, children...

  • acquire a strengthened sense of self.
  • learn to say "no" to things that are harmful.
  • learn to recognize, label and express feeling in appropriate ways.
  • practice communication skills.
  • obtain information about the harmful effects of tobacco and drugs.
  • learn safety precautions for medicines.
  • learn the importance of good nutrition and physical activity.
  • practice techniques to reduce stress.
  • increase acceptance of cultural diversity.

Preschoolers are not too young to learn these positive life skills. In fact, studies have shown both that people form life-long values at this age and that children as young as three can understand discussions about alcohol and tobacco.

HALO adopts a positive, loving approach that empowers children with knowledge and confidence. HALO promotes understanding choices as healthy or harmful, rather than "good" and "bad." Children eagerly embrace the concept of a healthy choice, rather than passively acknowledging that a behavior is good or bad.

With each new lesson, children are reminded that they are unique and special, that they have the ability to choose a healthy life, and that healthy means "growing bigger, stronger and better able to think."

How does it work?

HALO explains how both healthy and harmful choices ultimately affect a child’s mental and physical well-being by teaching social skills, emotional awareness, and how the body’s organs work.

The program uses songs, finger plays and other fun activities with HALO’s useful props — like Healthy vs. Harmful picture recognition cards, or the "anatomy apron" — to strengthen protective factors and reduce risk factors by helping children develop resiliency skills: self-discipline, an internal locus of control, problem-solving strategies, and tolerance of people and situations different from their own.

In addition to being nationally honored, HALO is cheered by parents, providers, prevention professionals, and funders alike. It is both kid-friendly and supported by documented child development and prevention research.