Main aims of our project: To promote the personal development and well-being of the child and teachers To foster in the child a sense of care and respect for himself/herself and others and an appreciation of the dignity of every human being To develop an understanding of healthy living, an ability to implement healthy behavior and a willingness to participate in activities that promote and sustain health. To enable the child to make informed decisions and choices about the social, personal and health dimensions of life both now and in the future To promote enjoyment of, and positive attitudes towards, physical activity and healthy eating and their contribution to lifelong health-related fitness, thus preparing the child for the active and purposeful use of leisure time To develop in the child a sense of social responsibility, a commitment to active and participative citizenship and an appreciation of the democratic way of life To enable the child to respect human and cultural diversity and to appreciate and understand the interdependent nature of the world To understand the concepts of personal, local, national, European and global identity. To help children, families, and schools develop resilience and positive life-coping skills
Our project entitled ‘Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds’ was aimed at improving the overall wellbeing of our school’s pupils and staff . We are now unfortunately living in an age whereby we are seeing a large increase in mental health issues including anxiety, depression, self harm and suicide. Our school is a large urban disadvantaged school. We were seeing more and more child obesity in our school due to poor diets and inactive lifestyles. We hoped to educate children more of the importance of healthy eating at home. Children partake in the recommended amount of physical education at school each week. Lunch time coaching in basketball, dance and football is also offered. However we hoped to integrate children and their families more into clubs in our town and community and make children and parents choose an active lifestyle over television and screen time. While all of our students finish primary education some do not finish their secondary level education and therefore do not progress to third level education. Teachers everywhere have an ever increasing workload and we hoped to learn new relaxation strategies which can be of benefit to both our school’s staff and children alike.