HPS - update - September 2019
Last year we started our journey to become recognised as a Health Promoting School. We are delighted to announce that the fantastic effort made over the year by the whole school ensured our application was successful! We are now one of the few elite schools in Co. Galway that are recognised as a Health Promoting School and will have our H.P.S. flag flying soon. In fact, we are one of the 30 schools that have the flag out of a total 522 schools in the Galway, Mayo, Roscommon area….what a super achievement! Getting the flag does not mean our journey is over…it is just the beginning. This year, we will continue to focus on mindfulness, healthy eating and being active on a whole school basis. We will soon form a new committee and will be communicating our efforts to you through the monthly newsletters and the website. First up as part of our action plan, we will be implementing mindfulness practices. Over the next 6 weeks, we will be focusing on mindful colouring, mindful eating, breathing techniques, yoga, mindful walking and gratitude. We believe by engaging with this initiative, we will make a substantial contribution to the health and well-being of the whole school community and through a variety of practices and activities, we hope to enstill life-long healthy habits in our children.
Last year we started our journey to become recognised as a Health Promoting School. We are delighted to announce that the fantastic effort made over the year by the whole school ensured our application was successful! We are now one of the few elite schools in Co. Galway that are recognised as a Health Promoting School and will have our H.P.S. flag flying soon. In fact, we are one of the 30 schools that have the flag out of a total 522 schools in the Galway, Mayo, Roscommon area….what a super achievement! Getting the flag does not mean our journey is over…it is just the beginning. This year, we will continue to focus on mindfulness, healthy eating and being active on a whole school basis. We will soon form a new committee and will be communicating our efforts to you through the monthly newsletters and the website. First up as part of our action plan, we will be implementing mindfulness practices. Over the next 6 weeks, we will be focusing on mindful colouring, mindful eating, breathing techniques, yoga, mindful walking and gratitude. We believe by engaging with this initiative, we will make a substantial contribution to the health and well-being of the whole school community and through a variety of practices and activities, we hope to enstill life-long healthy habits in our children.
Health promoting schools information
We have decided to embark on the journey of becoming a Health Promoting School this year. Although we are a healthy school already, our committee have decided to focus on different aspects of being healthy.
We had our second Health Promoting Schools meeting on Friday the 18th of January. From this, the committee have decided to focus on the two areas of mental health (in particular mindfulness) and healthy eating in working towards our flag. We will be ‘rolling out’ some new initiatives and ideas over the next couple of months so watch this space! The first initiative we will engage in is the ‘Food Dudes’ programme.
If you would like more information on Health Promoting Schools, have a look at the website below!
https://www.healthpromotion.ie/health/schools
This is our Health Promoting Schools committee for 2018/2019.
Health Promoting Schools Committee
3rd class: Michael Sheehy, Kyle Fairweather, Dara Naughton
4th class: Maeve Nolan, Kaylee Barbosa Dias
5th class: Zara Gordan Fleming, Bríd Cooley,
6th class: Caoimhe Nestor, Tiernan Walsh
Also on the committee are teachers Ms. Forde and Mrs. O’Connor and parents Aoife O’Leary, Siobhán O’Donohue and Clodagh Cooley.
Health Promoting Schools Committee
3rd class: Michael Sheehy, Kyle Fairweather, Dara Naughton
4th class: Maeve Nolan, Kaylee Barbosa Dias
5th class: Zara Gordan Fleming, Bríd Cooley,
6th class: Caoimhe Nestor, Tiernan Walsh
Also on the committee are teachers Ms. Forde and Mrs. O’Connor and parents Aoife O’Leary, Siobhán O’Donohue and Clodagh Cooley.
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These are the aims of the Health Promoting Schools Committee: 1. We wanted to create awareness of mindfulness amongst the children and staff and for them to engage with mindfulness practices. 2. We wanted all of the school community to become more aware of eating healthily and develop healthy eating habits. 
We are very lucky to have been chosen to participate in the Food Dudes Healthy Eating programme. This free programme is managed by Bord Bia and is funded by the Department of Agriculture and only a certain number of schools are chosen each year. Starting on the 4th of March, fruit and vegetables will be delivered daily (for 16 days) for all the children from Junior Infants to 6th class to try out. There will even be rewards for the children who make an effort to ‘try out’ each fruit and vegetable. After this, we will encourage the children to continue this healthy habit and hope to see lots of fruit and vegetables in lunchboxes for the rest of the year. This will support our Healthy Eating focus for our Health Promoting School Flag.
More information here: https://www.fooddudes.ie/about-food-dudes/ Update: We are now in Phase 2 of Food Dudes! The children have all received special Food Dude lunchboxes to bring their fruit and vegetables to school. Every classroom has a wallchart where we can track every child's effort in eating more fruit and vegetables. There's a chance for all the children to earn a bronze, silver, gold and even platinum certificate! Well done boys and girls...keep up the fantastic effort! Keep the life force strong! June 2019 - We are lucky to have one more week of Food Dudes this week. What a lovely treat at the end of the year. Jill, our Food Dudes co-ordinator, will also pop in during the week. 
Working towards the Health Promoting School flag, we have decided to work on 2 key areas:
Mental wellbeing/Mindfulness and Healthy Eating. Look at our action plan below, we have many exciting things coming up! 
This is a fantastic guide published by the Department of Health and children called 'Food and Nutrition Guidelines for Primary Schools. It contains lots of important information about healthy eating and has some nice ideas for lunchboxes. :)
These are the mindfulness practices we will be working on in the Summer term 2019 and the Autumn term 2019:
Mindful colouring Mindful eating Breathing techniques/mindful breathing Yoga moves Mindful walking Gratitude Meditation 
Our sign is up....we want everyone to know we promote health!!!!! :)
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