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On May 3rd the "Get Hovingham Healthy Forum", met to discuss our aims and objectives for our "Celebrating the Environment week", which is planned for the week commencing May 21st. It will be a fabulous themed week for the last week of this half term.
Despite fewer people coming to the meeting, we still had representation from children, parents, governors, and staff, and everyone that came had lots of excellent ideas to share.
Here is a copy of the letter sent out after the meeting.

Get Hovingham Healthy Forum

• Making a Nature Trail around the school grounds.
• Planting flowers, vegetables and trees.
• Visiting a local private woodland.
• Putting more bins in the school grounds.
• Getting the school grounds tidied up and the bushes cut back- to make sure the grounds are safe for children to explore and enjoy.
• Helping keep it tidy by litter picking.
• Remove weeds.
• Bird watching, and writing a bird guide to Hovingham.
• In Numeracy making tallies and graphs to show the number of different types of birds, or minibeasts seen in the grounds.
• Making a sensory garden, with plants to look at, feel, and smell.
• Minibeast hunts, and finding out all about them, and mapping where they are found.
• Visits to the allotments across the road to find out about all the different things grown there.
• In literacy writing stories about plants and animals and using the grounds as a setting for our stories.
• In literacy, writing guide books and signs for the Nature trails.
• Writing poems.
• Drawing, painting and taking photographs of the school grounds, and then following up with pictures taken in each season to see the changes.
• Making a space for a display of artwork inside the school, celebrating the outside environment.
• Learning songs about looking after the world around us, and changing the words to make our own Hovingham song.
• Plant colourful flowers outside the PDC.
• Making maps to plot the nature trail.
• Pond dipping, recording the finds and making graphs.
• Making hanging baskets to hang in the school entrance.

.....You can see from all these super ideas, it will be a great week. Fingers crossed that the weather remains as wonderful as it is now, and then I'm sure all of us will really enjoy celebrating our wonderful environment.

It is wonderful to see children having healthier packed lunches now, and the children who have school dinners now have a salad bar every day, and in addition to the hot healthy meals they can also choose a healthy sandwich option.
At the end of the lunch hour, the bell now rings 10 minutes early and the children gather together in their keystage playground to do "Wake up! Shake up!. This is a dance work out to lively music, and it is so much fun that even the care taker and the office staff are coming out to join us!
In addition to this exercise the children will take part in a "Health Challenge" in the summer field, organised by the School Council. There is a track marked out round the school field and the challenge is to walk round it 4 times, and then you have walked a kilometre!
During the Summer term we will also be having a "Celebrating the Environment" week, from May 21st and a "Fitness Week" during the week of Sports Day. The summer fair is being changed and will be an "Enterprise Showcase", as all the children will be involved in making products, promotional materials and selling.
Everyone will be invited to help "Get Hovingham Healthy", and support these events.... watch this space for more updates!

Look at this picture of lunch boxes before Health Week.

Look at these pictures taken the week after Health Week!

Well done!
Everyone at Hovingham is trying to get Healthy.
The school lunches are now very healthy with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and a daily salad bar. There is extra bread every day, and healthy dishes to choose from.
All the children are joining in with "Wake up and Shake up" everyday.
Soon we will be starting our "Be Healthy Challenge", led by the school councillors.

On Thursday 22nd February the "Get Hovingham Healthy" group met in the school hall, and Sue Mulligan from Leeds Health Initiatives came to talk to everyone about healthy packed lunches.
It was wonderful to see so many parents, children, school councillors and staff all at the meeting and we now have nearly 100 people who have signed up to help "Get Hovingham Healthy."
During the week before Health Week, Miss Fisher looked at the packed lunches that children were taking into lunch, and the majority of the lunches contained crisps and very few had any sandwiches in at all.

Health week was from Monday February 26th to Thursday 1st March. All classes from Reception to Year 4 invited parents to come into class and work with the children making healthy sandwiches.
The children in Nursery read the story, Oliver's Vegetables by Vivien French and talked with the children about healthy food and lots of fruit and vegetables.
All the children in Reception made healthy sandwiches and they used a special light box to help them see how important it is to wash our hands properly.
Children in Year 1 played the Balance of Good Health game, looked at the importance of careful handwashing and made healthy sandwiches.
The caretaker, and school bursar came and joined parents and the children in Year 2 to help make healthy sandwiches and pitta pockets. The children in 2Red also did lots of work on healthy foods and the Balance of Good Health to help them write a Healthy Eating Dictionary.

The children in Year 3 also enjoyed making sandwiches and wrote instructions for making sandwiches.
Year 4 did some wonderful art work with fruits and then enjoyed a busy afternoon making healthy sandwiches.

Year 5 made drawings of Healthy Lunchboxes and discussed healthy choices they could make.
Year 6 worked in the computer suite to make leaflets to promote Healthy Eating.
The week ended with Parents Evening on the Thursday evening. In the hall we put work from the week on display and Mrs Poole helped many children and their parents make lots of healthy sandwiches which everyone really enjoyed.

Miss Fisher has been in the dinning hall this week again and is looking to see if children are bringing in healthy packed lunches now. Many children now have sandwiches in their boxes, lots of them are made with brown bread and healthy fillings. Fewer children are bringing crisps and everyone is being reminded to only bring crisps one or two days a week and not to pack any chocolate in their boxes. It has been wonderful to see lots of fruit and yoghurt in the packed lunch boxes too.
Well done to everyone for helping us have a really successful "Health Week."

At the first meeting, 62 signed in support.
Many thanks to all those supporters!

On Monday 8th January we had the 1st meeting for "Get Hovingham Healthy". Invites had been given to all school stakeholders and it was fantastic to see so many people. Children with parents attended, school council, governors, the school office, and the Pupil Development Centre were all represented.Adults working in school, including the Headteacher, teachers, learning mentors, teaching assistants, the caretaker, lunchtime staff, and domestic staff all joined the meeting to show their support.
The aim of the support group is to organise and participate in a half termly, week long event in school. All these events will focus on a theme that will improve the Health or Wellbeing of all at Hovingham Primary School.
The first of these events is going to be a "Health Week". This will commence on February 26th 2007. It is planned for this week as Thursday 1st March is Parents evening, so we are planning to show in the school hall some of the work under taken during the week, so that all parents can see what has happened during "Health Week", and will be encouraged to join in with the next event.

During the meeting volunteers talked to members of the group and noted down their ideas for the health week.

These included-

Looking at food from different cultures cooked at home. eg Indian Porridge, Dal and chick peas.
Tips on hygene- eg handwashing.
Clean classrooms.
Making healthy food with parents.
Promise of no Junk foods.
All classes to wask fruit before eating.
Parent and children educated on E numbers.
Making lunch time a more pleasant experience.
Children to bring healthy snacks into school.
Having more fruit for dinnertimes.
More variety of fruit for everyone.
Some sort of breakfast club in every classroom.
Education for all on how to make healthy pacled lunches.
Fruit salad available every lunchtime.
Educating parents and childrenabout alternative healthy snacks.
Exercise.
Discuss and try interesting alternative snacks and food.
Reading labels, understanding effect of E no's, sugar and salt content.
Dental decay, and education about sugary drinks like coca cola.
Not eating sweets.
Jogging around the playground.
Everyone to walk to school, if they can.
Making fruit salads.
Going to bed early.
Everybody to bring water bottles.
Water for all.( No POP)
Cleaning the school, inside and outside.
More exercise.
International food focus with partents involved.
Fruit for all, including KS2.
Learning to cook healthy food.
Making healthy packed lunches.
Relaxation / Yoga / essential oils- so less stress for teachers!
Personal targets for staff to, for example, leave work on time once a week, or take exercise during the school day.
KS1 to make fruit salad with their daily fruit to share with KS2.
Breakfast club children to take a "Healthy Breakfast" collage or drawing back to their classrooms and discuss it.

With all these super ideas, it should be a fantastic week!

At the meeting, it was also mentioned that soon the children will be doing daily exercise- "Wake upand Shake up."

Mr Bell is launching our paper recycling this week.

At the end of the meeting everyone was asked to sign their names in support of, "Get Hovingham Healthy!".

If you wish to join the "Get Hovingham Healthy" support group, please talk to Miss Fisher, Yr 2. or email fishere01@leedslearning.net

Many thanks to all who attended the meeting, and I hope everyone is excited as I am about our 1st eventful week!

Jane Fisher