Healthy Schools Healthy Eating

 As a school we believe in a healthy diet for a healthy body and healthy mind and have worked with our school catering team to make sure that all the food we offer in school is of the highest quality, is beautifully presented and is fully nutritious to help us keep learning throughout the day.

We have a an award winning Healthy Cookery Club which is run by Mrs Smith and operates each term, with children learning the basics of healthy cooking and then sharing them with their parents. You can now try some of the recipes at home by looking at the The Lancashire Food in Schools Recipe Book.

Our new School Menu

Our NEW Autumn menu – click the link to find out more

We already involve the children in lots of aspects connected with Healthy Eating, not only through our Cookery Club and the Food Technology curriculum, but through our allotment, visiting the Growing Well farm near Kendal, having our own gro-beds in school, and working closely with the School Nurse and Catering Team to promote a Healthy diet and lifestyle.

You can also watch some of our videos to do with Healthy Eating

Growing Well Autumn 2015

Year 2 Picnic Autumn 2015

Westmorland County Show 2015

Heaves Farm 2015

Growing Well at Sizergh Barn Spring 2015

Food Technology on Art and DT Day 2015

Green Week with Lancaster University 2015

Heaves Farm 2013

Year 2 make Pizza 2012

Visit to Frankie and Bennys 2012

Come Dine With me 2011

We also ask the children regularly about the food in school so that we can make sure everyone is eating a balanced meal that feeds the mind and body.

Recently we have looked at our dining area which needs some love and attention, and have worked with the catering team, the welfare team, school council and school staff to look at ways in which we could improve the whole dining experience. Soon we will post photos of our new look dining area, together with our new menu and photographs of the food on offer in our canteen.

This is what our canteen looked like in October 2015

From a meeting between parents, teaching staff, welfare staff, the catering team and the Headteacher we found that there were a few things we needed to change to make sure that lunchtimes were the best they could be. This included:

• The dining room needed love and attention – painting and decorating to be a more welcoming space
• New display boards showing the menu each day in photo form, actual shots of the meals on offer and Healthy Schools board to be done
• Reorganisation of the room, less tables and chairs as move to 3 sittings rather than 2!
• New cutlery holders for middle of tables
• Music in background at lunchtimes – classical music to be chosen by HT
• Children service to be changed so 3 sittings possible, in readiness for 75 Reception in 2016
• Children to line up in order for different meals to speed service up – signs to be put on wall
• Scraping to be taught to Reception so that as they move through school they can do their own
• New Welfare tabards to be ordered as needed with School logo on
• Review meeting to be planned in for end of November

 

We asked some children why they chose to have a packed lunch rather than a school dinner.

Comments included:

‘I don’t like the stuff on the menu’

‘Mum likes to see what I have eaten’

‘I like bringing my lunch in my lunch box’

‘If you have packed lunch you can sit outside when the weather is nice and don’t have to be in the dining room’

Parental comments included:

‘I can never be sure what they have eaten when they have a dinner’

‘My children have come home hungry as they say the portions are too small’

‘My kids are fussy eaters and don’t like food that is offered’

‘I haven’t felt that the quality of food is especially good, some of the meals do not look very appetising’

We asked about the whole lunchtime experience. Some children found being in the dining room ‘scary because it is too loud’; ‘It is loud and shouty and I don’t like it’; ‘I hate queuing up as people push and start to be silly and then get into trouble’; ’I get scared that I will drop my tray and have no dinner’

After the meeting in October we started working on our action points

Look at our fabulous new dining room

Have all the changes made a difference? YES

After looking at all the class dinner and packed lunch figures we are now consistently serving more dinners each day. Data has highlighted one class where uptake is low and so the cook and healthy school leader will be targeting this class in the New Year.

Weekly Totals	KS1 dinners	KS2 dinners	Total dinners
21st-25th September	486	325	811
28th-2nd October	484	323	807
5th-9th October	480	347	827
12th-16th October	437	304	741
2nd-6th November (4 days)	387	283	670
9th-13th November	486	372	858

What do the children say now?

‘The dining room is nice now, I like sitting down and talking to my friends’

‘I like having my dinner on a plate, it.is nicer than those trays’

‘School dinners are yummy now’

‘ I like that you can comment on the dinners and Mr Hunter reads what you put’

Mr Hunter has introduced a comments file. So far comments have included ‘the carrots were hard today and I didn’t like them’

‘ I tried beetroot for the first time and I liked it’

‘I cut it myself!’

Adults, both welfare staff and teaching staff, have also noticed:

‘The noise levels are down and we have seen the children passing the cutlery holder and the cups to each other’

‘The fruit dish is passed around and the children are talking to each other’

‘I love coming in here in the morning to see if anything else has changed!’

Other things we have identified are:

• To help us in the dining room Reception have been practising using cutlery in the in the playdough. Using cutlery is very important life skill.
• To support health and hygiene, the children need teaching about how to select items from the salad/fruit bowl and how to maintain hygiene when eating
• To increase children’s ability to select the food they like, Mr Hunter is going to offer different classes the opportunity to come and have ‘tasters’ in the new year and try something they haven’t had before
• To increase uptake, Mr Hunter is going to invite parents in to try some of the food on offer in the Spring term

 

Something else we recognised was that we needed to teach the Reception children how to use cutlery successfully so have introduced lessons for this within their Reception provision.