Just because you are watching the Super Bowl doesn’t mean you have to eat unhealthy food.

That’s the lesson students in Brenda Pullen’s Western High School nutrition and wellness classes have learned since the Colts won the AFC championship and a trip to Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Like Pullen, teachers across the area used the upcoming game as a teaching moment, developing lessons in math, reading, handwriting, writing, geography and other subjects around the Colts and their quest for a second Vince Lombardi trophy.

Pullen said her nutrition and wellness students developed healthy recipes for Super Bowl party foods. They entered the recipes in a contest sponsored by the Milk Association, so each one had to include milk, cheese or yogurt as a main ingredient.

She said they learned to develop healthy recipes or adjust recipes to include less fatty, healthier ingredients.

They also learned that “when you are planning parties, it doesn’t always have to be sweets. You can get some nutritional value in there as well.”

Her students were excited about doing something for the Super Bowl, she said.

“This was an assignment I could give them that really meant something,” she said.

Jennifer Long, a teacher at Eastern Elementary, incorporated the Colts into her first-graders handwriting lessons.

Long found facts about the Colts and football online, and the students wrote them and talked about them.

She said she came up with the idea when the Colts went to the Super Bowl in 2007.

“I was trying to think of a way to show spirit and make it educational,” she said.

In addition to being good practice on handwriting, “I would say it expanded their vocabulary a little.”

Heidi Vance’s sixth-grade language arts students at Taylor Middle School have read and written about the Colts in their Super Bowl unit.

Vance said students have read the Colts Scout magazine to research players, using note-taking skills to gather main ideas and details.

They also wrote acrostic poems, which are poems in which the first letter of each line spells out a word.

Like the other teachers, Vance said the lessons use state standards. The Super Bowl events “make it relevant,” she said.

“It’s not another writing assignment. Anything you can get them excited about reading and writing, whatever the outlet might be, it’s a good thing.”

Northwestern Elementary fifth-graders will have a special Colts day Friday, with Super Bowl centers, according to teacher Teena Wallace. Students will complete the centers in four groups: Manning, Freeney, Clark and Addai.

Activities will include using sale ads to plan a menu using a budget, paying with paper money and figuring sales tax, finding NFL teams on a map, corn hole and making origami footballs.

Wallace said using a real event makes school more fun and incorporates real-life skills, like budgeting and using money rather than a debit or credit card.

“We’ve lost the use of real money. When we do math activities in class with money, a lot of times the kids struggle with that,” she said.

All lessons tie in to state standards, she added.

Robyn Dill’s second-graders at Northwestern Elementary learned about geography and letter-writing, she said.

Dill and her students wrote letters to students at Bayou Woods Elementary School in Slidell, La., about 50 miles from New Orleans, sharing information about their state, school and team.

Friday morning they will “meet” their new friends via live Windows media. Each group of kids will perform a cheer or chant for either the Colts or the Saints.

In addition to learning letter-writing skills and learning geography by finding New Orleans and Slidell on the map, the children learned about Roman numerals, research and vocabulary.

Dill said they also learned lessons in sportsmanship, because some students are Saints fans.

“It’s been a good way for us to bring in those concepts. Sometimes young kids don’t understand just because you’re for a different team, you’re still friends.”

Dill said the lessons all touch on Indiana’s educational standards, and tied in to a significant event, she thinks they are more likely to remember the skills learned.

“If there is a personal connection, that information is going to be absorbed by the kids even better. We capitalized on the momentum. Once you get them motivated, they don’t even know they are learning.”

• Danielle Rush is the Kokomo Tribune education reporter. She can be reached at 765-454-8585 or e-mail her at danielle.rush@kokomotribune.com