April 2006

In the Easter holidays, I was involved with activities in 2 different schools in Keighley.
At the first school, I helped to run two activity sessions. The first was smoothie making. We had a wide variety of fruit for the children to choose from and they could also choose to add milk, apple juice or orange juice. We had two groups of 10 children, who took it in turns to make smoothies. All of the children chose at least 3 types of fruit and what surprised me the most, was that all of them chose either apple or orange juice. So with the fruit juice, that's 4/5ths of their daily portion towards the 5 a day target. We explained to them about how many portions of fruit and vegetables they should be having a day and what a portion size is. We also asked them questions such as "Who has had fruit or vegetables today?", "How many portions have you had?", "What is your favourite fruit or vegetable?"
We also went through the alphabet and they had to think of a fruit or vegetable beginning with every letter. I had a great time working with this group of children, as they were all so enthusiastic and willing to have a go. In the second session at the school, I helped to run a food and physical activity session. We had different games to do with fruit and vegetables e.g. fruit salad, where every one is given the name of fruit (apples, banana, pear, grape). Then you shout out the name of a fruit and all the people with that fruit name have to change places, and if you say fruit salad every one has to change places. We also provided work sheets for them to complete, such as the A-Z of Fruit and Vegetables. Both sessions were for 8-11 year olds and were arranged by the Extended Schools Cluster.

At the second school, I helped to run a physical activity and cook and eat session. This session was for 5-8 year olds and their parents. We started off with introductions and icebreakers. The session started off with the physical activity session, using games such as traffic lights. Then we went on to do some aerobics. This was really fun - watching the concentration and enthusiasm on the faces of the mainly 5 year olds as they followed the instructor, was fantastic. There was also a circuit of physical exercises for them to have a go at.
Next we went up to the cookery room and did our cook and eat session. The task was to make pizzas. The children weighed out their ingredients (with help) and followed the facilitator on what to do. We made our own bases, then we chose what toppings to put on. We had all sorts of healthy toppings, such as peppers, sweet corn, mushrooms and cheese. Some of the children put a little of every thing on!!! Then we put them in the oven to cook, and then came the best part of all - eating them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Which they all did.)