Students from Mr. Mannion’s 5th Class displaying some of their healthy lunches. Some students are also showing their Daily Food Diary. The students are looking forward to seeing what kids in other countries eat.
As part of their homework the children are now completing a food and exercise diary for the week. They fill out the worksheet pictured below. They include their breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. They also note how many glasses of water they are drinking each day. As well as this they write down the type of exercise they have done and the amount of time they spent at it.
This is making the children and parents more aware of what they are eating and how much exercise they are getting each week.
The children also engage in peer assessment where they review and discuss each other’s diaries.
Promoting positive mental health with Ms. Lee’s First Class in the Claddagh National School
The children in 1st class have been working on emotions/feelings. They follow a number of steps which allow them to deal with any emotion they experience. They use the worksheets to help them in this process.
First they must acknowledge/identify the feeling. They do this by labelling the feeling and naming times when they feel this way. Next, they identify where they feel it in their bodies. They also assign a colour to each feeling.
After this they think of ways that they can express the feeling in a positive way.
This activity is encouraging the children to acknowledge and accept their feelings while also giving them new ways to deal with their feelings in a healthy manner.
Partner school teachers who are travelling to Galway for the Learning Teaching and Training Activity in May 2016 will have the pleasure of seeing master teacher Jennifer Lee demonstrate this lesson in front of two classes!
The staff and children of Claddagh NS have taken on a new challenge, to run 1km every day! In the news, we heard about a school in Scotland where the children run a mile a day and have noticed that the health and fitness of everyone in the school improved, so we decided to try it out for ourselves. We measured out a route in our school playground – if we run four laps of this route (marked by a yellow painted line) it amounts to over 1000m.
The children in 3rd class designed posters to advertise the Daily K and to encourage everyone to take part. We aim to get every class to jog or run the route once a day as a break between lessons or when they need some fresh air. We have only been doing it for two weeks so far, we were pretty tired at the start but already we are getting fitter. The important thing is we are having fun getting some exercise together! Wish us luck!
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| From Galway Claddagh School Photos |
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| From Galway Claddagh School Photos |
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| From Galway Claddagh School Photos |
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| From Galway Claddagh School Photos |
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| From Galway Claddagh School Photos |
Build a Daily Menu
Build a Weekly Menu
By Mr. Leonard’s 4th Class
Today is Thursday, March 3rd, 2016. Mr. Leonard was not at school today so Ms. Asgard took over.
We built our very own weekly menus in small groups of five. Each child got a plate labelled: Morning, morning snack, Lunch, 2nd Snack and Dinner. There were a lot of foods to choose from. Ms. Asgard put on some silly music and the children in the group had to pick their food items for their meal while the music was playing. When the music stopped, the children had to stop choosing food items.
Each group was given a day’s menu to plan. We had to make sure we didn’t choose too many sugary foods on the menu or choose the same foods too many times in a row. Also we had to make sure we didn’t choose too much food for each meal or snack.
Our Principal, Mr. Gallagher, came down to have a look while we were doing this activity. He said it’s ok to have donuts sometimes because they are really nice.
Mr. Geraghty came to visit as well. He is the teacher in charge of Physical Education at our school. He is super healthy and fit!
After each day group chose their foods, the other children graded the menu. The children stuck the foods onto the plates with Blu-Tak. Ms. Asgard doesn’t understand why children are so fascinated with Blu-Tak but they are!
After that, Ms. Asgard took some photos of the children and their plates. You can see the pictures of us right here!
We had so much fun! We will all think more about choosing healthier foods to eat. We also figured out that if you’re having a special day like a birthday or some other celebration, it’s ok to eat some unhealthy foods but not to do that too often!
Since we were the first class in the school to do this activity with Ms. Asgard, she learned a lot, too. She knows she has to make more beverages (drinks) for the children to choose from and also make some of the foods smaller!
We missed Mr. Leonard today and we know that he would have loved being here! ☺
We all know the proven positive health benefits of laughter and play for children. However, did you know that ‘play’ is also excellent for stress relief for adults as well? One excellent programme which was organised by our school Home School Community Liaison Teacher, Yvonne Fahy, along with the Health Service Executive is the Ag Sugradh le Cheile Programme. (Playing Together Programme)
This programme facilitated the active engagement of play between parents and their children. This benefitted both the children and their parents in terms of keeping children in touch with their parents as well as bringing out the more playful child-like side of their parents. It also allowed parents to learn new creative was of playing with their children which could encourage children to reduce the amount of time spent on ‘screens’ (i.e. tablets, television, games consoles, laptops).
As you can see from the photos, the parents and the children are having fantastic time playing with each other! Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that are the most healthy for our souls!
This week, Claddagh National School had the proud honour of earning the status of ‘Active School.‘ This means that the school has achieved the highest levels of engagement with our students in health and fitness objectives.
According to the website:
“An Active School is a school that strives to achieve a physically educated and physically actives school community. The Success Criteria will guide schools in terms of the ASF requirements and the Sample Improvements will show schools what others have done to achieve the flag.”
As part of the award, one of our students had the honour along with our Principal, Mr. Michael Gallagher ,of raising the Active Flag for the first time. Here is an article written by one of our students from Mr. Leonard’s Fourth Grade Class about this special day!
After having a successful workshop with a psychologist and sociologist in Athens with our partner school colleagues, our Claddagh teachers, Ms. Asgard, Ms. Parkinson and Ms. Lee are now demonstrating a teaching approach in the curriculum area SPHE and Drama back at our own school. The approach is called “Islands of Emotions.” They are demonstrating the approach for Claddagh class teachers so that they can learn a new methodology about how to encourage students to explore their own emotions through drama.
Children are encouraged to speak about the sensory (colours, sounds, musical instruments/songs, smells, tastes) feedback they get when feeling particular emotions. They are asked to act out in a body or facial expression how it feels to have that emotion and think deeply about how each emotion feels while one experiences that emotion.
The children in Mr. Walshe’s Fourth Class enjoyed exploring the Islands of Emotions activities with Ms. Asgard. The children now understand how vital it is to share and understand their own emotions; both positive and negative emotions are important to share and understand.
Health Action Promoting the Physical, Emotional, Nutritional and Social 