Be mindful
At this busy time of year, mindfulness can help children to take control of their emotions.
During our recent themed week, all children took part in mindfulness workshops to learn a variety of techniques to use at school and at home. Here’s a reminder of a few of them that might be useful for over the holidays. A mindfulness newsletter/parent guide will be sent out in the new year.
Breathing hug
Start with both arms in the air. Put one hand across your tummy and the other on your shoulder. Breath slowly in and out.
Breathing tree
In a standing position, raise your arms as you breath in and release your arms back down as you breath out.
‘Ok’ breathing
Make an ‘o’ sign on your tummy button to represent that it is ok to feel different emotions. Slowly breath in and out.
Mindfulness bottle
This is a bit like a snow globe. Shake it up and watch it. Simply watch the disturbance as it begins to settle – as does our mind.
Take a bottle, add glitter and food colouring and seal tightly.
Relax and Read
It has been great to see so many of you at Relax and Read this term!
Happy holidays!
We have reached the last week of the children’s first term at Moortown. What a busy term it has been! The children have settled really well and it has been great to get to know them and see them learn and grow in confidence.
We hope you have a great Christmas and Happy New Year!
Road Safety Pantomime ‘The Gift of Life’
Yesterday, all pupils watched this lighthearted show that delivered important road safety messages.
Pupils joined Santa and Rudolf as they travelled back in time to prevent young Neil Downe from being knocked down. Whilst being fun and interactive, the pantomime covered the following road safety themes:
- the Green Cross Code
- seat belts
- be bright, be seen
- safer cycling
Ask your child about the performance and what messages they took away.
Packed lunches
On Monday, Caitlin Kitson, Nutritionist and Healthy Eating Adviser, delivered a whole school healthy eating assembly. The main focus was the importance of healthy packed lunches.
We talked about the different food groups on the Eatwell Guide, why different proportions of each food group are important for our bodies and how to achieve this in a packed lunch.
It was great to hear the children’s excellent knowledge of the Eatwell Guide when answering Caitlin’s questions.
At Moortown Primary, our packed lunch guidance includes:
- information about the different food groups
- how to put together a healthy, balanced packed lunch
- links to recipes and ideas for healthy packed lunches
Following the assembly, all children were given a copy of our packed lunch guidance and the Eatwell guide.
As an alternative to packed lunches, school meals, including a vegetarian option, are prepared daily in our kitchen and children are offered a choice of main courses and desserts. Children select their main meal choice at the start of the day. Catering Leeds provides food which meets national Food Standards criteria. School meals can be combined with packed lunches.
Free school meals are available to all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. They are also available to some older children according to family income. It’s important to register for entitlement to free school meals, even if your child has a packed lunch or is in a younger class – this is so we can receive additional funding (called the pupil premium) which we can use to help your child.
What is our new school charity?
Part of our Who do you think you are? themed week was to learn about charities and how we can support them.
Our previous school charities, Leeds Mind and Yorkshire Air Ambulance Money, will benefit from £309.97 and £508.88 respectively as a result of fundraising and donations. Thank you.
It is now time to change our school charity. Each class discussed a range of charities, researched by the children for their homework, and voted on one charity they wanted to put forward for the school councillors to decide on.
Here were the class choices:
- Year 1 Plastic Oceans Foundation
- Year 2 Barnado’s
- Year 3 RSPCA
- Year 4 St Gemma’s Hospice
- Year 5 Make a wish
- Year 6 Diabetes UK
The final decision was a vote by the school council and the winning charity for 2017-2018 was Make A Wish. We will support this charity for one year.
We look forward to welcoming representatives from the charity in January for an assembly where we will hear more about their valuable work.
Who do we think we are!
We’ve enjoyed having lots of different visitors and activities as part of our themed week.
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Who do you think you are?
Our themed week is in full swing with many highlights so far.
- Mindfulness workshops for Year 1, 2, 3 and Reception.
- Dove self esteem sessions for Year 5 and 6 (Visitor feedback – ‘We really enjoyed running the sessions and the classes we had were great and very engaged!’)
- Visits from RNIB, BID sensory services and the Leeds deaf and hearing impairment team for all classes
- West Yorkshire Police Hate Crime session for Year 5 and 6
- Some Year 5 and 6 children attended the Moor Allerton Elderly Care ‘Old & New Games’ afternoon (Visitor feedback – ‘They were brilliant and a pleasure to have.’)
- Whole school assembly about charities by Val from the Salvation Army charity shop in Meanwood
- Year 4 visit to St Gemma’s Hospice
- Year 5 visit to Marjorie and Arnold Ziff centre
- Year 2 visit to Donisthorpe Hall
Thank you to parents who have attended our mindfulness workshop on Monday and our community coffee morning and wake up shake up today.
There is still more to come.
- PCSO visit to talk about community safety, road safety and monitor speed outside school in 20mph zone for Reception, Year 1 and 3
- Mindfulness workshops for Year 3, 4 and 5
- Learn languages in our community for Year 3 and 4
- Two more chances to walk, bike or scoot to school (Road Safety Week) to be in with a chance to win prizes on Friday
- New school charity will be chosen
- Have a go at the Who do you think we are? competition
Take a look at the class news pages to find out more about your child’s learning this themed week.
Charities
This week, we focus on identity, diversity and community in our Who do you think you are? themed week. As part of this week, children will think about our school charity. Currently, we support Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Leeds Mind. A previous School Council selected these because they wanted to help people, support a mental health charity and wanted to help local and regional charities. They were chosen because pupils passed on to School Councillors very clear and strong arguments.
We’ve helped these charities for two years now, so it’s time for a change. We need you to have a discussion at home about which charity would be best for us to support. We will now support one charity for a year. Each class will then discuss this and then the councillors will bring the views and ideas together to decide on the charities.
Once your child has decided on a charity, make sure they have clear, powerful reasons to support their views.
You might want to discuss whether we support…
- a local charity
- a children’s charity
- a charity which helps a vulnerable group in our community
- should we ensure the new charities are very different to the current ones or previous ones?
- should we need to have charities at all?
- if your child was to set up a new charity, what would (s)he choose, and (as always) why?
Mindfull or mindful?
Would you like to find out more about mindfulness and how it can be used to support your child at home?
As part of our whole school themed week next week, all children will be taking part in mindfulness workshops. There’ll also be a parent/carer session on Monday 20 November at 2:30-3:15pm.
Please contact the office if you would like to attend.
