Fruit/Sport/Art

How to combine sport activities with healthy food and art? Yes, you can – create photos integrating pieces of fruit or vegetables in a picture presenting a sport discipline. To perform this activity we designed an inspirational presentation – made of pictures published to web. Having watched a video children chose fruit which seemed inspirational for them and created their own artful pictures. All the pictures (well, almost all…) were arranged in a professional way in a virtual gallery.

The objectives of the activity:

  • developing creativity and imagination
  • demonstrating innovation in concept
  • improve the children’s ability to control materials and techniques
  • cultivating an enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts
  • promoting healthy lifestyle

The link to the virtual gallery:

https://www.artsteps.com/view/602d680bfc99b16fd6daf269?currentUser

School festival

To disseminate and promote the products and an idea of the project we established an exhibition and a ‚healthy lifestyle’ stall at the school festival – an annual event, during which pupils, students from all grades, teachers, parents and inhabitants of the neighbourhood can visit the school and de-stress by participating in activities of different themes. Many of the products, such as posters, bookmarks, games and photos were displayed. Two experts in healthy everyday living, Anna Walentukiewicz, from University of Sport Education and Magdalena Dworniczak, running FitKid foundation, provided healthy-lifestyle counselling and advised attenders on how to change their habits and avoid risk factors.

The objectives of the event:

  • encouraging people to have healthy lifestyles
  •  recognizing that modifiable lifestyle factors
  • making healthier diet choices,
  • realizing an importance of getting regular exercise,
  • learning how to manage stress and organize calming environment at home
  • learning how to adopt physical activity as a lifestyle


Good manners – make life easier for others

Life becomes less stressful if you know the rules of how to deal with some situations in different places. To understand how important some informal regulations are we made a list of all the places where they are especially significant. They took part in a quiz about customs trying to guess where the rules are obeyed, afterwards we discussed the differences between mustn’t and shouldn’t or have to and should and after that the students in groups made their own lists of rules for different places in which one should be careful and know how to act. Next, they designed their own leaflets with rules which should be followed in some chosen by them places. The younger students celebrated ‚Good Manners Day. They studied some typical situations and decided if the person presented behaves well or badly. Next, they created images depicting examples of good and bad behaviour.

The objectives of the activities:

  • making students believe that positive behaviour is a life skill and that should be taught
  • spreading awareness of the impact of some rules on our well -being and self confidence
  • understanding that everyone should respect other people’s rights and privacy
  • naming the rules of proper and not so proper conduct
  • learning how to behave in a considerate way 
  • realizing that in case you don’t know how to behave you should behave decently, not hurting anyone.

Meeting with a star

How to achieve success in sport becomes a really important question when you attend a sports school and you are surrounded by people like you, wanting to become stars. To answer questions like that, our Team for Health Promotion invited a special guest – Martyna Borysławska, who is currently a handball player for a national team. Additionally, children took part in other sport activities.

The objectives of the event:

  • understanding the role of the motivation in achieving success
  • recognizing the role of well – being and a proper diet for an athlete
  • teaching children why and how to value learning new skills
  • understanding that sometimes it is the process not the outcome that counts

Children did have fun, asking questions, absorbing some vital tips as well as taking part in all the games and tournaments.

After-school activities

It took us two months to prepare presenting the effects of all these extra, time-consuming and heavy work activities in the limelight. In order to:

  • introduce some relaxing after school activities,
  • provide the students with the chance to extend their learning beyond the formal curriculum
  • expose children to new experiences, ideas, and perspectives beyond their everyday school lives
  • provide them with the chance to manage stress related to performing in public
  • enable students working in a team,
  • give the students an opportunity to socialize, develop new skills, such as acting, performing, creating, designing and sewing
  • promote our school and the project

we scheduled extra drama and sewing classes. Not only did the students attend them, but also the teachers. Finally all the guests invited to the school festival could see the final product, which was the play written and performed by the school community.

That’s me!

A sense of individuality and a sense of self-esteem are both the most determining factors in how children feel, think, behave, and motivate themselves in the world. If children believe in themselves and they are able to recognize their skills they can take positive actions on their own behalf and approach life obstacles as challenges to accept and cope with. To learn how to manage these skills, during English classes and form periods 4th Grade children, using visual materials talked about their skills and competences. After that they prepared a survey about abilities and carried it out asking other pupils what they can do. They calculated the results and presented them on graphs. Afterwards they depicted the features characteristic for them.

The objectives of the activities:

  • being able to name sport activities and hobbies
  • working in a team, sharing duties
  • improving their math skills
  • taking the time for personal reflection
  • perceiving oneself as an individual being
  • boosting a sense of children’s self-esteem
  • giving them an opportunity for learning in a different way
  • encouraging them to speak about their abilities and competences

Emotion Awareness Day

Emotion Awareness Day served us as a good opportunity to discuss the feelings we all go through. The youngest children named the basic emotions, they decided which of them are positive and which are the negative ones, they tried to establish what makes us recognize other people’s feelings. During watching cartoons we named emotions, predicted them and finally they tried to present some basic feelings drawing human faces. Older students took part in similar activities. They studied photos of some situations and named the emotions of people involved, while learning new vocabulary they also tried to describe possible situations which may cause these feelings. They also tried to establish and then rate conditions which usually cause anger. A privacy breach definitely got to the top.

The objectives of the activities:

  • ability to name emotions
  • understanding that emotions are usually short-term
  • recognizing one’s own way of coping with anger
  • ability to define the common causes of emotions
  • ability to recognize other people’s feelings in their body language, face expressions, tone
  • realizing one’s needs for safety, closeness and acceptance 
  • understanding that in most cases we can manage our aroused emotions are calmed and they can be proceed in a developmental process.

What makes you relaxed?

School, school, after-SCHOOL activities, before SCHOOL activities. A vicious circle of school-related terms. What makes you feel relaxed? What can let you forget about the troubles, expectations, duties and obligations? Everyone has got their own ways to cope with daily problems. Children started from brain-storming for all the ideas of passing free time. They began from the conventional ones, but afterwards more specific pastimes appeared on the common mind map. After the discussion and learning some new vocabulary they made their own mind maps on posters in groups and afterwards, using https://wordart.com the children made their own, individual lists of things which make them not feeling worried and then created the word clouds in pictures symbolizing leisure for them.

The objectives of the activity:

  • introducing new vocabulary, related to pastimes and interests
  • recognizing the difference between obligations and leisure time
  • realizing when you have too much stress and you need to relax
  • finding common activities which make you and your friends relaxed
  • recognizing one’s own needs and one’s own individuality