Being Healthy – Dental Hygiene
This week, it’s Being Healthy Week. We’ve been learning about dental hygiene. Here are some of the top takeaways from our learning:
Brush your teeth morning and night. – Poppy
Floss your teeth. – Daisy
Don’t eat sweets after you’ve brushed your teeth. – Esme
Go to the dentist if your teeth are hurting. – Arthur
Eat a balanced diet. – Kupa
Help at home by reviewing this learning with your child. Does their learning reflect your dental hygiene routines?
Online vs Offline – a healthy balance
As part of our health week, Year 3 have been learning about time spent online and spotting the signs of too much screen time. It’s important to have a happy and healthy balance of online and offline activity, so we began by adding some positives of both into a scale. Our aim was to keep the scale balanced, representing a healthy balance of online vs offline. Here are some examples from both sides of the scale.
I enjoy connecting with my family online.
I enjoy playing my games online with friends.
I like learning synonyms of words using Google.
I enjoy going outside and playing with friends.
I enjoy my gymnastics in the garden.
I really like making dens outside.
We then learnt about spotting the signs of too much screen time and what to do about them. These signs can show in various ways, such as physical aches in our bodies, to devices running out of battery due to being used too much in one sitting.
Finally, we created a poster to take home as a reminder to keep a happy and healthy balance of online and offline activity.
Help at home:
Help your child find a healthy balance between the two. Being online can be really healthy for us to learn new things, but we don’t want children being lost in the internet. Maybe set up some online vs offline routines at home.
Living and Learning: Being Healthy
We kicked off our Being Healthy themed week with an energetic morning of Football and Tri Golf! The children were amazing – they worked brilliantly as a team and showed great respect to the coach with their fantastic listening skills.
In the classroom, we’ve been learning all about health and prevention. We’ve had some great discussions on topics like sun safety, healthy eating, what is a vaccine and how does it work? and how to stay clean and healthy. Together, we explored the following areas:
Help at home:
This week, try one of these easy jobs at home:
☀️ Sun Safety: Help remind someone to wear a hat or put on sun cream when outside. Why do we need to protect our skin?
🦠 Germs: Help remind your family to wash their hands before meals and after playing outside. Can you show how to wash hands well?
🧼 Keeping Clean: Help brush your teeth carefully for two minutes. Can you explain why brushing teeth is important?
Being Healthy – Archery and Golf
This week, it’s Being Healthy Week. Today, we welcomed a PE coach to school who taught the children about archery and golf. The children really enjoyed the activities and made fantastic progress in learning some new skills. We had some sharp shooters on the archery range and some impressive feats of strength in the long drive competition!
Help at home by encouraging your child to take up a sport. Perhaps you could try something new over the summer break?
Euros Football Competition!
Year 5 and 6 girls took part in a fantastic Euros-themed football competition as St Theresas Primary School on Monday. Our given country was Germany, so the pupils had to wear colours making up the country’s flag – we even had some supporters bring a huge flag to help spur the team on!
The children performed admirably, showing respect, resilience, courage and many more positive traits. They worked as a team at all times, and took on board healthy reflections after each match. The girls managed to get off to a great start, drawing their first two games 1-1 and 0-0. Things were tense and the competition was tight. Lily was a superb striker, scoring a fantastic goal for the team. All 7 pupils played every game and tried their absolute best – it was a pleasure to watch them flourish. Here are some photos from the event:
Being Healthy – Physical Activity
This week, it’s Being Healthy Week. We’ve been learning about what happens to our body when we exercise. It is recommended that children have 60 minutes of physical exercise each day. We came up with a huge list of activities that we could do to make up our 60 minutes ranging walking to school to gymnastics.
We learnt about the changes in our body when we exercise, including an increased heart rate. It was really interesting to see how our heart rate (pulse) increased even after just a few seconds of exercise!
We concluded our learning by considering how and when to find support if we’re worried about our health.
Help at home by keeping a physical activity diary. Are there any missed opportunities for physical exercise in your day?
Healthy Week – smoking and vaping
This week we had a visit from D:side Dave. The focus was on smoking and vaping.
Dave spoke to us about where smoking isn’t allowed (schools, theatres, hospitals, theme parks). Interestingly, we learnt that smoking was once allowed on aeroplanes – this really shocked us.
We looked at toys from the past which imitated the act of smoking and even Disney films from the past showed smoking.
Vaping targets young people and all our children said they had seen a teenager vape -very worrying. We learnt that smoking one disposable vape is the same as smoking 20 cigarettes.
Dave delivered a key message throughout: DON’T START SMOKING OR VAPING!
He told us that the average smoker spends £10 a day. We worked out how much this would be across a week/month/year and what we could but with this money.
Today, there are still many unknowns about the risks of vaping. The children took part in an activity to demonstrate how vaping can cause illness, but these can be hard for doctors to detect straight away. Side effects could become clear in years to come.
Living and Learning – Body Image
In Living and Learning, we’ve been learning about body image. Our weekly statements have been:
- “I can say one good thing about myself.”
- “I know that people I see in the media don’t always reflect real life.”
We begun our learning by thinking about identity and the things that make us unique, especially the way we look. We thought about some words we can describe a face:
- smiley
- freckly
- round
- blue eyes
- shiny
- long
- frowny
- long hair
- cheeky
- surprised
- kind
- big grin
Using mirrors, we looked closely at our appearance, considering facial features in detail. Then, we had some fun by drawing self portraits and celebrating the features that make us unique!
We enjoyed reading Embrace Your Body by Taryn Brumfitt. It’s a fantastic book that helps us to appreciate who we are. We felt empowered to embrace our uniqueness and find something special in everyone.
I was impressed by how much the children understand and appreciate how interesting it is to have such a wide variety of people in the world.
Help at home by discussing body image with your child. Perhaps you could use this sentence starter to share some thoughts: Something I like about the way I look is…
Help at home by watching and discussing this video about real beauty.
KS2 production
Rehearsals are well underway for the KS2 production. The stage is up (thank you Mr Atkins!) and the children are working hard to add the finishing touches before our performances next week.
The children have worked so hard to learn lines, get the songs pitch-perfect and to create costumes and props. We can’t wait for you to see it!
If you haven’t yet told us if you would like your child to stay in school between the end of the school day and the performance on Wednesday evening please let us know as soon as possible.
Transition To Year 2
Yesterday morning, we had our special transition morning where we met our teachers next year (who are very excited to be with us).
This was a great opportunity for the children to tell us all about themselves and what they enjoy doing most.
Whilst Mrs Bye is already very familiar with the soon to be year 2s, I (Miss Gledhill) loved seeing how positive the children were about themselves, learning and each other!
The children were all fantastic and we can’t wait for September!
