Healthy Living

Fun run/walk in September 

Pinelands North Primary is committed to eating healthily, to selling or giving away only healthy foods, and to ensuring that all our children participate in activities which raise their heart rates! Far too many children today are eating takeaways and fast foods, and leading a sedentary lifestyle. There is an alarming rate of obesity in young children around the world, with this condition affecting children emotionally and physically as they get older. Children can't concentrate properly at school without good nutrition, and eating the incorrect foods sometimes causes behavioural problems in children too.
We encourage our families via newsletters and at public meetings to provide their children with healthy food to eat during the day. Families should try to include fruit, vegetables, protein and carbohydrates every day, and if they include bread, it should be the healthiest one they can afford. These are consumed during break times and during the 'Go Snack' time...usually half way between school starting and break time. These snack times give children the extra boost they need to focus on their learning.
Liquid refreshments should be available for children all the time, and the school recommends a water bottle with cool fresh water rather than fruit juice. Food provided at school should always be the best possible option. 

Our tuckshop has the seal of approval from the Heart Foundation and sells reasonably-priced good healthy food in case families don't have time to create healthy snacks the evening before. Our EarlyAct, the group of children who raise money for people less fortunate than themselves, also sell healthy food on Fridays but they do sell a few 'treat' items too. We also encourage party packs sent to school on birthdays, to be a healthy option. So parents could choose crunchies, popcorn, gingerbread or muffins instead of birthday cake. Our Red Connect parent group serves healthy foods whenever they provide snacks at school functions, and the only time you might see 'sugar' in its various forms, will be every second year at our Red-a-Fair!  Our families might also be pleased to hear that all our school functions only provide food that can be eaten by everybody! We have moved on from the time when people ate separately, and we need our children to learn to be accommodating and inclusive.

Using a piece of our new apparatus

We also encourage our children to 'dispose' of their food in an inclusive way. Any uneaten sandwiches or snacks are taken to our school kitchen so that any child, who may have forgotten lunch or doesn’t have any, can go and collect something to eat there. Spare leftover vegetables or fruit are fed to the school ducks or put into our school worm farms. Boiled eggs are given to the canaries and the finches, and bread crusts to the wild birds.

To encourage children to eat the food they might otherwise not eat at home, an idea would be to buy them a really great lunchbox and water bottle. Cut vegetables and fruit into small pieces, and cover with lemon juice if your child won't eat 'brown' fruit. Discuss school lunches regularly with your children. Do you need to adapt their lunch to their changing needs? Children should have enough food for both breaks if they are older than grade 2, and if they are in grade 1 and 2 and they do extramurals after school, they will also need extra snacks for the extra time they are at school. Packing a healthy lunchbox, day in and day out, can be a real challenge. It doesn't take long to run out of healthy and delicious lunch box ideas. Pinterest and FaceBook have lovely ideas which are easy to make but really good healthy options - sometimes even giving it to your child in a different way, might encourage them to continue to eat 'boring' foods!

One of the 'Dads' races at our sports day

Healthy living includes exercise. Pinelands North offers many different options to make
 children move - from table tennis to swimming, from team sports to individual ones. Because we know every child is different, parents should encourage their children to tackle several different sporting codes - not only to see if they have a particular talent, but also to encourage other life skills like teamwork, perseverance and empathy. Every child should move for as many hours as possible per day. Early encouragement of sporting activities, even just outside play, should be part of every child's daily plan.

Foundation Phase gala

In 2015 Pinelands North staff arranged a GoKart Derby Day to raise funds to build more playground apparatus so we now have a circuit built on the field which can be used for physical education classes or just for children to strengthen their upper bodies or learn to balance during break times. This year we will have another of these Derby Days to raise funds for a 'floor' covering for this circuit so that, should a child fall off the equipment, they won't be too badly hurt. Healthy eating and exercise together affect children positively and a child who is eating well and keeping their heart rate up, rarely suffers from depression.  Give your child the best possible starts to life as, making healthy living a habit, lasts a lifetime!