The primary focus of the project titled „Healthy mind in a healthy body” is to promote a healthy lifestyle through proper diet and physical exercises among children. The project aims to shape new healthy behaviours, and develop habits and skills that will help children to take care of their own health. This will be achieved by inspiring pupils to take up pro-health activities, both at school and at home, developing their interests in areas concerned with health protection and improvement, encouraging children to take up new active forms of leisure, such as various sports, and inviting their peers to do them, and by educating children to recognize, avoid and/or counteract health hazards. The project envisages the following activities: art competitions, thematic online newsletters, P.E. lesson scenarios, online quizzes and crosswords on healthy diet and active leisure, meetings with diet specialists, medical doctors, sportspersons, friends/parents/grandparents leading an active lifestyle, joint preparation of school menus, drawing maps and preparing folders of places with sport facilities and spots in the open air where one can actively spend their free time, educational activities aiming at promoting pro-health actions, helping to recognize health hazards and developing behaviours that could help avoid or counteract them. Realization of the project involves use of modern ICT for accomplishment of project tasks, promoting and making available project products/outcomes. Participants will have gained new skills in learning and teaching, both for acquiring and/or broadening, but also transfer of knowledge as well as evaluation of the progress made. The project will integrate participants from partner institutions by means of ICT (forums, website, blog, videoconferencing). Participants will have honed their language competence in English and other European languages, computer skills and learning methods. Realization of project tasks will help develop social and civic competence and raise the awareness of the necessity to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
The project involved 5 schools from Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Turkey and Romania. The schools involved 3 primary schools (Greece, Poland and Romania) and 2 complex schools – combined primary and junior high schools (Lithuania and Turkey). The project entitled “A healthy mind in a healthy body” was aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle among students, in particular through healthy diet and physical education. The rationale behind the project was linked to the strong conviction that it is necessary to start shaping proper eating habits of the Young Europeans and to raise awareness of a healthy lifestyle, by introducing a healthy diet, regular physical activity and active leisure. Through the realisation of the project we attempted to help young people to take the right decisions concerning their diet and ways of spending their free time, inspiring them to take up active and creative activities that could come in place of the long hours spent in front of the computer. The project proved extremely necessary as it had considerably enhanced the knowledge and skills of its participants and had increased the awareness of the young people as to the needs of their own body and the necessity to eliminate risky behaviours (such as use of nicotine, drugs, alcohol and other psychoactive or harmful substances). The partnership fully realised all project tasks: art competitions (5 international contests, approx. 200 submitted student works), thematic Online newsletters (3 issues), lesson plans and syllabuses, Students’ Dream PE Lesson Outline (60 lesson plans from all partner schools); 5 quizzes, 6 interactive crosswords, 6 online questionnaires on sports and healthy lifestyle, dedicated meetings with dietary specialists (1 meeting in each school), medical doctors (1 meeting in each school), sports people (1 meeting in each school) and other people from our local society leading a healthy lifestyle (1 meeting in each school). The partnership also jointly worked on: healthy menus (approx. 100 menus from all partner schools); folders/maps that show places in the close area of each partner school where one can do some sports or actively spend their free time (5 folders). We had planned the release of 1 photobook, but we finally published 5, each documenting current project activities, including local cuisines of each of the partners. Moreover, on the initiative of students from the Romanian school, partners prepared their own cookbook: the Romanian students prepared recipes of pancakes, while the Polish students prepared recipes of dishes with apples. We also organised 2 immensely successful international sports events titled „International Sports Day”, in which all contests had been prepared by students of all partner institutions (10 highly creative disciplines). The project envisaged the use of ICT for carrying out, promoting and disseminating project tasks and activities. Accordingly, all participants have acquired new skills of learning and teaching, not only in the area of health protection and maintaining one’s own well being, but also in the field of ICT skills. Participants of the project used the ICT to acquire and disseminate knowledge as well as to evaluate the tasks performed. Voting in international competitions (on the works prepared by the students from all partner institutions) were carried out using electronic and online polls. The project proved to be a very useful means of integration between partner institutions, facilitated by the use of ICT (emails, web pages and social networking). All participants have improved their competence foreign languages, mainly English, but also other European languages (basic vocabulary), and other areas of education, exchanged ideas for realising pro-health tasks and promotion of sport. The realisation of project activities enabled the teachers participating in the project to gain new experience, while numerous tasks proved so well prepared and tailored to the needs of health educational programmes that they will be included in school curricula of various subjects after the project has concluded. The e-learning applications developed during the project will continue to be used, while the skills gained by the teachers will introduce novelty and will enrich the educational offer of all schools, not only in the area of health. The project was a great challenge to all the international partners involved. It was also a great educational adventure, with capital-letter ‘Health’ as the priority, realising unique form and developed on an unprecedented scale. Participation in the project strengthened the position of schools in local communities and enabled the development of links with various sport institutions that will continue in the form of attractive joint sport activities continued long after the project has concluded. Schools have integrated internally and with their international partners, and expressed their willingness to continue this fruitful cooperation.