Healthy & Eco Schools

Healthy Schools and Eco Schools week

Thank you to all the children, staff and visitors who made this an interesting, successful and fun week!

Here are some of the activities that took place. Please remember all the important information we found out.

School Visitors

John Watters and Malcolm Sweetlove both trained Year 6 and Yr 5/6 in first aid. This covered: CPR; the recovery position; choking; shock; wounds and bleeding; burns; sprains and breaks; concussion; asthma; epilepsy.

The trainers for Bikeability took Year 5 through their paces all week.

Community Police Officers spoke to all the children about an area of personal safety. The older children were taken out of school to look at aspects of safety in the local community.

Lloyd Bristow (Rochdale Nutritionist) talked to all classes about the reasons for choosing healthy eating and drinking options.

On the fitness theme Rebecca Jackson took zumba sessions with all classes.

Competition with prizes!

Foundation and KS1 created pictures of fruit and vegetables and KS2 wrote a poems about fruit and vegetables. Winners were chosen from each class and awarded a water bottle. All participants were awarded a certificate as a thank you for their entry. The work submitted was brilliant! Well done everyone!

Work in class-

Foundation classes made favourite food plates, carried out data handling tasks about food and did lots of exercise.

In KS1 there was a talk by Mr Golding about bee keeping.

The children visited different classes and found out about good dental health, talked about first aid and practised applying bandages, made eco friendly boats with sails and made fruit smoothies and healthy sandwiches. We spent time thinking about ways to develop good mental as well as physical health.

At St Thomas More we are aiming to become more eco friendly – this means we will become known as an eco school.

Eco Code

C.O.W - Change Our World
Don’t be a fool save our school.
Go green, be clean.
Less pollution is the best solution.
Don’t throw it away it can be used some other way.
Save us a fight turn off the light.
Don’t be a dummy clean water costs money!
So turn of the tap this is our eco rap!

Written by the Eco Committee

What have the Eco Committee been up to lately…
The Eco Committee has been meeting every two weeks to discuss and decide on new eco projects.
The subcommittees – energy, waste and litter have been up and running since October.
A new Eco notice board has been put up to raise the profile of Eco schools in our school.
There was an eco poster competition before Easter, winners have now been announced (see posters via link). Posters are being used to brighten up our eco notice board.
A compost committee has been put together to be in charge of the new fruit and vegetable waste bins around the school. They are in charge of emptying the bins into the large compost bin, the compost will be used on the garden area.
The garden area has been tidied up.
The Eco Committee has written an Eco Code for the school to follow .
Back in November 60 free trees from the Woodland Trust were planted in the garden area, they will be transferred in a year or so to the school field to create a mini woodland area.
The school has taken part in two leaf weeks (October and March) where different classes attended different eco activities. In March Year 1C went to St, Patricks to build mini beast hotels. See Mrs. Craven’s page for photos.

What have we done so far? Each Key Stage 2 class has nominated two members to become members of an Eco Committee. The Eco Committee is now formed and they are ready for action

What can parents do to help?

If your child is on packed lunches send sandwiches, fruit etc. in little plastic boxes rather than cling film or plastic bags as this will cut down on waste going to landfills.

Recycle anything that can be from packed lunches.

Encourage children to take all waste home so that you can either recycle it or put in compost.

Send in water in reusable bottles that can be washed and sent back in, again this saves on waste – otherwise recycle the bottles used (remember to remove the lids when recycling).