Health Newsletter

Health Newsletter

November 2007

SPORT

P7 rugby Tournament.

What a fantastic start to our first ever competition. Our pupils came home with medals and a trophy!

East Lothian Primary Schools Sport Association held a tag rugby tournament on 23 November at Meadowmill sports centre.   Mr Thomas took a team from P7 to represent Windygoul. We made it all the way to the semi finals and although beaten by Law Primary in the final, we were awarded the Fair play trophy. All we need to do now is get it engraved and perhaps even buy a trophy cabinet!

Swimming competition

Mrs Herriot will be holding trials this month to select a team from P6 and P7 to take part in a swimming gala on 18 January.  Successful swimmers may then go on to represent East Lothian.

Sports Athletics

A team will be selected from P7 to represent Windygoul at the Sports hall Athletics event on the 6th of December at Meadow mill. The children will take part in a variety of athletic events during the competition.

Free Fruit

P1 & P2 continue to benefit from the free fruit initiative from the Scottish Government.

Fruit Only Days

We hope to encourage all our children to eat fruit more often by introducing fruit only days. In January, we intend to have Mondays and Tuesdays as fruit only days. We hope you will continue to support us in encouraging our children to make healthier choices.

Walk to School

Walk to School week was at the beginning of October and was extremely successful. During the week our Junior Road Safety Officers encouraged our pupils to walk to school and each class kept a chart to record this. We are asked by the local authority / Scottish Government to return our figures on children who walked to school on Wednesday of that week. We were delighted that 80% of our pupils walked to school, with 4% cycling and 16% travelling by car.

Toothbrushes

Nursery and P1 have been provided with free toothbrushes as part of the ongoing drive from the Scottish Government in promoting dental hygiene. Dental hygiene is one area we will need to continue to strive to improve, as last year figures for children who had evidence of tooth decay amongst our pupils was over 50%. This was for children who took part in the NHS Lothian dental inspection, which focuses on certain age groups.

P1 menus

A pocket size guide has been provided to all P1 pupils to help parents discuss the choices available each day with their children. If you feel that your child will not eat the hot menu options then you have the opportunity to provide a packed lunch instead.

Headlice

Please check your child’s hair on a regular basis.

For information and further advice why not try the bug busting website: http://www.chc.org/bugbusting/

Real facts about head lice

• The eggs of head lice usually take 7 to 10 days to hatch (recorded range 5 to 11 days). Live eggs and head lice are not easily spotted on the head
• The school nurse cannot solve the head louse problem for schools and parents.
• Combing dry or damp hair with a fine-tooth comb is not a reliable way to detect lice. They are especially deceptive in short, straight hair, where you would think it would be easy.
• Metal combs are not suitable for louse detection because these combs are primarily nit combs. Lice caught between the tightly spaced teeth remain unnoticed against the metal and can be combed back into the hair unharmed at subsequent strokes.
• There are no studies proving that wet head lice grasp hairs more tightly, hampering their removal with a fine-tooth comb.
• It is not scientifically proven that head to head contact has to be prolonged to catch lice - close contact is enough.
• Head lice are a community problem. About 20% of cases are amongst people over 16 or under 4 years old. A community event led by local schools in the celebration of Bug Busting days can solve the problem.

Anti-bullying week

We will be taking part in the Scottish anti-bullying week from 19 - 25 November 2007.

The children undertake a variety of activities within their classrooms from circle meetings to badge making and some of the older children are set to enter an anti-bullying competition where they have to design a leaflet about cyber bullying.

Sex Education

P6 parents had the opportunity this week to attend an information evening to explore the curriculum content and ask questions about the forth-coming topic. Many thanks to those who attended. We hope you found it useful and are prepared for those inevitable questions.

Health week

Thank you to those parents who put their names down as interested in becoming involved in promoting health in Windygoul. As part of our development plan, we will be forming a health promotion group, which will look at planning our health week for later in the session. A member of our school health group will be in touch with all those parents who offered to help in response to our questionnaire.

Results of questionnaires

Parent questionnaire

Thank you to the following P7 pupils who did a tremendous job on parents evening encouraging parents to complete our questionnaire and helping you find your way around the school. Our fantastic helpers were: Jenna Dury, Kris Edgar, James McDonald, Shelley Black, Kellie Jamieson, Rachel Docherty, Anna-Lee Connolly, Chloe Selkirk, Kirstin Kilday and Hayley Williamson.

In total we had 155 completed questionnaires, so many thanks to all those who took the time to complete it.

Our results are as follows:

81% of our pupils have been involved in a health week in their previous schools.

100% of our parents are aware of the importance of including fruit and vegetables in our daily diet.

61% of us eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables each day, however there are still 38% who need to increase their fruit and vegetables intake to meet the recommended daily portion.

93.5 % of our parents are in support of school moving towards fruit only days.

Over 99% of our returns realise the importance of teaching our pupils about healthy choices, and that will involve us working in partnership.

 Pupil questionnaire

The children completed their questionnaire as a class and we found that they had had a variety of experiences in previous schools that encouraged them to be healthy from fruit tuck shop, making smoothies and soup to a variety of sporting activities.

When asked what could be done to make our school a healthier and happier place the list of options were numerous!  Here are just a few:

v      After school clubs

v      Free fruit

v      Fruit only days

v      Fruit tasting

v      Friendship stop

v      Buddy systems

v      Plants & flowers

v      Health week

v      And the list goes on and on!

Ms Macartney

Depute Head Teacher