St. Mary's Primary School

The 5 Ways to Wellbeing – Connect, Be Active, Keep Learning, Take Notice and Give flowed through an event at St. Mary’s this week as we celebrated the health and wellbeing benefits of living a healthy and active life.

The event was part of the Gannawarra VicHealth Walk to School program with students encouraged to walk, ride, scoot or skate to school throughout October. Incorporating this extra physical activity into daily living is important; students develop a greater sense of independence, learn more about the environment around them, meet up with their friends, and arrive at school alert and ready to learn. Bus travellers have been supported to walk or run a set circuit at school during recess so that they too can mark their activity on the classroom walking calendars.

Cr. Lorraine Learmonth came along to the event and encouraged students to continue to actively travel to and from school, or the school bus, all year round. She said that all eleven primary schools across the Gannawarra Shire have joined more than 500 schools across Victoria to get out and about in their communities walking or riding to school throughout October. It’s a healthy habit that the Gannawarra Shire, schools and partner organisations are keen to support.

A launch and viewing of the new Gannawarra Ride2School media clip followed. Promoting riding to school, pedestrian safety messages and how to check the ABC for bikes – Air, Brakes and Chain, the clip had been produced by the shire with students from Cohuna Consolidated, Kerang Primary and Kerang South Primary School as part of the Ride2School program earlier in the year.

Next we heard from Jess, a District Nurse with Cohuna District Hospital. Jess talked to the students about how an important part of her role as a nurse is to keep people healthy and well so that they don’t end up in hospital. Students demonstrated some activities that can be done every day to help build muscle and bone strength to prevent injuries. Stretching is an easy, free and fun way to start to build up muscle strength.

 

Fuelling our bodies with the right food is also important to living a healthy and active life. Tanya, a Community Health Nurse with Northern District Community Health, opened our eyes to the amount of sugar in common food and drinks. Did you know that a 600ml bottle of Coke has 64 grams of sugar, a 600ml bottle of Lift has 66 grams of sugar and a 600ml bottle of Sunkist has 70.8 grams of sugar. With 4 grams equal to one teaspoon that’s almost 18 teaspoons of sugar! Even a small drink like a prima contains 5 teaspoons!

Students learnt what to look for on food labels and were encouraged to take a closer look over the coming days and weeks so that they are more informed. Our brains and bodies need a small amount of sugar but we should be getting that sugar from natural foods such as fruits rather than from processed foods. We also learnt about some of the tricky things food manufacturers do to make their product look like a healthy option such as using words like real fruit, yoghurt top, low fat, natural or healthy. Sometimes these foods contain more sugar than others that are similar – a yoghurt topped muesli bar for example has almost twice as much sugar as a plain muesli bar!

Tanya said how important it is to eat well, drink well and brush well so as part of her talk she showed students how to brush their teeth using a soft brush, a dob of fluoride toothpaste and small circular movements taking special care to clean the inside, outside and tops of teeth and those big molars at the back where food can get stuck. Brushing twice a day - morning and night - will help keep our pearly whites smiling! Healthy teeth help us to chew, speak, smile and be confident. We only get two sets of teeth in a life-time so it’s important to look after them. Cohuna’s water supply isn’t fluoridated so to get the added benefit of strengthening the teeth with fluoride it’s recommended not to rinse with water after brushing.

Andrew, a local policeman, came along to talk about staying safe when out an about walking and riding in the community or on farms and to remember to Stop, Look, Listen, Think! He picked out some important messages from the Ride2School media clip - wearing a well fitted helmet, checking a bike’s roadworthiness – the ABC – Air, Brakes and Chain, how to ride safety on the footpath and road taking care to look out for cars backing out of driveways. While it’s popular to wear headphones and listen to music while riding and walking this means we can’t Listen for cars, trucks, motorbikes and other danger. This means it's a really unsafe thing to do.

 

Looking after our wellbeing is also an important part of living a healthy life and the 5 Ways to Wellbeing are some simple things we can do every-day to improve our health and wellbeing. After being issued with a ‘walking passport’ students collected the 5 Ways to Wellbeing stamps as they enjoyed a walk around the school oval.

Back at the school we enjoyed a healthy fruit snack of watermelon, apples and bananas donated by Rocky’s Fruit and Vegetables Cohuna and juicy local oranges provided by Border Packers Koondrook. We also had yummy cold glasses of milk provided by Murray Milk or an icy cold cup of water.

The Gannawarra VicHealth Walk to School program is rolled out across the Gannawarra Shire as a Gannawarra Local Agency Meeting (GLAM) partnership project. This is a partnership between Gannawarra Shire Council, Northern District Community Health, Kerang District Health, Cohuna District Hospital, Mallee District Aboriginal Service, Victoria Police, with support from the Southern Mallee Primary Care Partnership.

Walk to School is a VicHealth initiative. For more information go to: www.walktoschool.vic.gov.au.