Autor: tamsylwka

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

World Health Day 2022

It is now 6 years since we started celebrating the World Health Day making it a School Health Week, because for a few days we try to draw attention of to whole school community to health issues. During the week various activities are performed, all of them aimed at:

  • promoting health
  • developing students’ ability to recognize disturbing symptoms
  • encouraging students to adopt regular sport activities
  • emphasizing on good eating habits 
  • sensitizing students on realizing the connection between physical and mental health
  • spreading awareness of the role of rest and relax in everybody’s life

To achieve these objectives we organized:

  • a lecture about functioning of the brain, delivered by a psychologist Joanna Klimaszewska
  • a lecture about nutrients, delivered by a dietetician, Aneta Kałużna
  • how ADHD brains function – a lecture delivered by a psychologist, Martyna Domańska
  • how to care for one’s body when you grow up, a lecture delivered by Anna Walentukiewicz 
  • first aid workshops delivered by Dorota Rycharska
  • grab a snack – cookery workshops
  • how to sleep well – workshops conducted by a psychologist Marcin Ciepliński
  • active dancing breaks
  • contests, tournaments, games, escape rooms, presentations.

Healthy habits – start from now!

Instilling a routine of regular sport activities, drinking the right amount of water, having regular mealtimes, now avoiding grains and vegetables in childhood are likely to make it more likely that kids will continue these good habit when they are older. The objectives of a series of English classes about health were as follows:

  • recognizing diseases, labelling body parts, ability to speak about feeling not well
  • establishing the rules for making balanced meals
  • recognizing the impact of physical activities and playing with friends on our well-being
  • explaining connections between habits and emotions
  • establishing daily routines
  • making pupils aware of the importance of sleeping well

The pupils did role playing, solved rebus puzzles, they made pictures of their lists of daily routines, they answered surveys and, basically, had fun.

Nutritional steps guide

To promote understanding what the food consists of we developed the guide with recipes for healthy snacks, leaflets with information about different diets, students also built 3D molecules in order to present the nutrients found in Mediterranean diet foods and they made posters about the basic elements found in food. All the recipes, step by step instructions, daily menus and the information about lunches were collected in one common publication. https://www.canva.com/design/DAFKsMATQ0w/YLSr2AU5U9O7jvS6gzFNow/view?utm_content=DAFKsMATQ0w&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink

Polish students also collected recipes for salads and smoothies on one padlet https://padlet.com/tambelli_sylwia/l27de5ffs3k7cwr3

Welcome to Alquerias!

Finally, after two years we could meet again. The schedule of short terms exchanges of groups of pupils was turned upside down though, because we restarted the project from the last planned mobility C8 in Alquerias. Apart from that, everything went according to the plan. The superior topic of the mobility was food and influence of a right diet on our functioning, our lifestyle and achieving life goals. The activities which the students took part in involved:

  • presentations of the schools
  • introduction games
  • cooking workshops
  • sports routine
  • visit to a local manufacturer of citrus fruits
  • studying healthy dietary habits and making presentations about common diets
  • a visit to open-air marches and talking about food typical in the area
  • creating a Kahoot game

Apart from the activities planned in the frame of the project’s objectives the students visited also the most famous places in the area to learn about Spanish culture and history and their paid a visit in the town mayor office. They did enjoy their stay in Murcia and Alquerias.

Yoga for everyone

Learning the basic yoga rules in two hours’ time seems impossible and it is impossible as it usually takes years. However, it is good to try, understand what it is about and find out what benefits of yoga are:

  • better flexibility
  • gaining peace of mind
  • building strength of muscles
  • improving one’s posture
  • preventing spine diseases
  • increasing heart rate and blood flow
  • helping you to concentrate and focus your attention
  • improving consciousness

The students, taking part in a short mobility in Alquerias in Spain took part in yoga workshops during which they learned some simplified yoga poses for beginners and they were encouraged how and why they can do it on their own.

Choose the diet which is right for you

A healthy diet can help you maintain a proper body weight, reduce your risk of certain diseases and improve your quality of life. However, there is no universal diet, common, easy to follow and recommendable for everyone, regardless of their place of living, gender, daily activity and likings. We have to know the rationale of each diet, their pros and cons and it is important to choose a diet plan that fits our goals and lifestyles. During the mobility in Alquerias, in Spain, the students developed the rules for some, most popular diets. They discussed their does and don’ts, as well as benefits and risks and designed leaflets.

Jar salads

The idea seems simple. Take a jar and start composing layers. There are some reasonable rules to follow, though. Our students learned during the workshops how to make healthy and colourful salads in the jar. They started from brainstorming for products representing different food groups, such as grains, diary, meat, fruit, vegetables and fat. Afterwards, after watching some recipes they managed to establish a pattern for tasty, not soggy jar salad. The rules they set up are the following: http://Healthy salads – presentation

  • the home made dressing goes to the bottom
  • the heaviest products, containing proteins, such as meat or legumes over the dressing
  • lighter bits, such as chopped veggies,
  • some seeds or nuts as they contain vitamins and proteins
  • light green leaves, like rocket, spinach, lettuce.

Next the students designed their own salads, wrote the recipes and they drew them or created recipes using technological tools.

Eating healthy for the beginners

It is extremely important to know how to prepare proper, nutritional meals since the very beginning. Thus, the school has a powerful opportunity to teach kids to appreciate and enjoy wholesome foods by using creative children’s activities about healthy eating. To make the workshops more impressive the older students were asked to prepare and show the younger ones presentations about groups of food products, their functions and rules which should be followed while making meals. After that the children prepared smoothies, cocktails, salads and desserts, trying to follow the rules they had been taught. Also during English classes they played various games learning vocabulary, designing their healthy pizzas, dividing products according to their origins and planning their wholesome meals.