HealthCraft was designed to promote health & wellbeing among children aged 8-12 through engaging, age-appropriate & digitally supported learning. The project aimed to introduce essential concepts of healthy living, including nutrition, physical activity, sleep and mental wellbeing, to promote positive behaviours that support long-term health and help prevent non-communicable diseases. A key objective was to enhance teachers’ digital and pedagogical capacity by providing them with turn-key digital resources, including info-bite videos and supportive lesson plans. HealthCraft also sought to increase the attractiveness of health education by embedding it within STEM-oriented, game-based learning environments, particularly through the use of Minecraft. By combining health expertise, educational practice & digital innovation, the project aimed to develop high-quality, accessible and evidence-based resources that could be easily integrated into primary school settings. In addition, HealthCraft aimed to strengthen European cooperation between schools, higher education institutions and health professionals, ensuring that the project’s outputs were transferable, scalable and sustainable beyond the duration of the project.
HealthCraft was developed in response to a need for more effective & age-appropriate health education for primary school children, in consideration of rising concerns around non-communicable diseases linked to poor nutrition, physical inactivity, inadequate sleep and declining mental wellbeing. The project addressed a gap between the importance of early health education and limited availability of engaging, digitally supported learning approaches in schools. It also responded to the need to enhance teachers’ digital competence and provide them with structured, high-quality resources to support the integration of health & wellbeing into classroom teaching. Through concise training videos, gamification in Minecraft-based learning environments and a Teachers' Toolkit, HealthCraft enabled health concepts to be communicated in an accessible, motivating & inclusive manner for children aged 8-12. The project strengthened links between health research, education & school practice, ensuring that evidence-based messages on nutrition, physical activity and mental health could be delivered in ways that are meaningful & relevant for young learners. This contributed to the promotion of sustainable healthy habits from an early age to adulthood.