| Choose your information trial >> | ||
 |
 |
 |
A bumper crop of teaching ideas and activities for schools!
The Year of Food and Farming teacher newsletters are packed full of inspiring ideas and activities that are linked to the curriculum.
There are programmes of study to make teaching and learning around the themes of food and farming more accessible and lots of fun!
The newsletters will provide you with:
- links to resources that support curriculum delivery in schools
- lesson ideas that include practical suggestions such as recipes and growing activities
- seasonal news
- school case studies demonstrating how other schools are getting involved in the Year of Food and Farming.
Register now at www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk/E-Newsletter/ to receive monthly primary or secondary newsletters with tailored activities to help you take part in the Year. Visit www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk for more information on the Year and to view past newsletters in the news section.
Breakfast clubs are on the menu at The Education Show
Stand no: HZ-G59
The School Milk Project and the Home Grown Cereal’s Authority (HGCA) are working together to promote the benefits of milk and cereals as part of a balanced diet for school children of all ages at this year’s Education Show at the NEC in Birmingham.
With more schools opening earlier to meet the needs of working parents, running a breakfast club is a good way of ensuring children eat a nutritious breakfast at the start of the day, preparing them for school lessons and play.
Diane Cannon, School Milk Project manager says: “This year we are particularly interested in trying to attract secondary schools. We have already succeeded in getting school milk back into 40% of primary schools with children drinking milk at mid morning break and breakfast clubs are now slowly being introduced. Unfortunately this is not the case in secondary schools and encouraging healthy breakfast eating to this wider audience presents us with a whole new challenge.
“We want to promote the benefits of milk and cereal products to all children. With more schools now opening for longer, breakfast clubs help give structure to the day and encourage a feeling of belonging for students.”
Roz Battye Market Development manager at HGCA says: “This is the first time we have exhibited at the Education Show and it was logical for us to team up with a natural partner such as milk in a way which will hopefully capture schools’ imaginations. Today children need more help than ever with their diet to ensure they stay alert and can function all day without getting too tired. Eating a good breakfast will help achieve this.”
Advice on how schools can start a breakfast club will be available on the stand which can be found in the Healthy Schools Zone, stand number HZ-G59. Visiting schools will also be able to enter a free prize draw to win £50 towards starting their own club.
To download a PDF file of the prize draw questionnaire please click here.
The Education Show is open from 9.30am – 5.00pm on 28 and 29 February, and 9.30am – 4.00pm on the 1st of March.
For further information please contact Diane Cannon at The School Milk Project on 01285 646541 or Roz Battye at HGCA on 0207 5203975.
Date for your diaries!
Farmhouse Breakfast Week – 20th - 26th January 2008
The ninth annual Farmhouse Breakfast Week will take place from 20th – 26th January 2008 (www.farmhousebreakfast.com) and promises to be the nation’s largest breakfast celebration ever, with over 1,600 events expected to take place across the country.
Run by HGCA (Home-Grown Cereals Authority) to promote the variety and provenance of British breakfast foods, the organisers are calling on chefs, schools, restaurants, cafes and producers to get involved to remind the nation about the importance of starting the day with breakfast.
‘A Great Start’ is the theme of this year’s celebration and HGCA will be encouraging everyone to wake up to a balanced breakfast as part of a healthy and active lifestyle. HGCA have also acquired the support of The School Milk Project team who are helping to promote the week by providing FBW packs and encouraging schools to start a breakfast club, providing a healthy choice to all children. Dietitians and nutritionists agree that breakfast is essential for starting the day and that it can boost concentration and mental performance as well as reduce stress levels. Eating breakfast also kick-starts the metabolism and helps with weight control as it reduces cravings for mid-morning snacks. Breakfast can also be an important source of vitamins, minerals and fibre and eating breakfast regularly may help prevent colds and flu.1
New for 2008 is a fantastic recipe booklet with a range of ideas for all occasions. There is Honeyed Muesli Crunch for when time is short; through to Roast Tomato Toasts and home made waffles for a leisurely weekend brunch. Quick milkshakes and an energy-rich Fruity Tea Loaf are ideal for sporting breakfasts.
WORLD SCHOOL MILK DAY
How did it start? World School Milk Day is celebrated on the last Wednesday in September. This date was chosen because schools were open in all the countries surveyed during this month. The end of the month was selected to allow countries in the Western hemisphere sufficient time to prepare for this day, as in most of these countries the school year starts in early September. Wednesday was chosen as it was a school day in all countries surveyed.
The 1st World School Milk Day was held in 2000 and it has since become an annual event Every last Wednesday in September, over 30 countries - regardless of whether they are large or small, rich or poor - celebrate World School Milk Day, demonstrating that the interest in school milk is universal.
This year World School Milk Day was celebrated on Wednesday 26 September 2007.
The goal of World School Milk Day is to provide a particular day when attention is focused on this issue and thereby promote such programmes. Importance is lent to the event by the fact that other countries are doing the same thing, on the same day.
How is World School Milk Day celebrated? World School Milk Day is an "open" day - people are free to celebrate how they wish. Celebrations can be at any level - from national or regional events to individual schools. Some countries have started in a small way and have organised bigger celebrations with each passing year. Big or small, all have a common goal: to draw attention to school milk and thereby promote its consumption.
Celebrations of past years showed how creative people are in celebrating World School Milk Day. In almost all countries celebrating the Day, free milk is distributed to children in schools. Other activities include sporting events, distribution of educational and promotional material and celebrity visits to schools; also drawing and art competitions are very popular. Often dairy companies act as sponsors of the Day and provide not only free milk but also promotional material such as t-shirts, caps, pens, posters, etc. for the children.
Some of this year’s activity
Scotland
Claire Doyle, our Scottish facilitator visited four different schools with Charlotte the cow, the project’s mascot, joining in the salsa dancing with children from Dykehead Primary School. The school started a milk scheme last year.
South
Dairy Farmers of Britain provided Hampshire facilitator Sharon Long with free milk to take to Waite End Primary in Waterlooville. The children also received booklets and stickers as well as posters and milk-shake recipes.
St Mary’s CE Primary in Bentworth also celebrated with a special assembly – a copy of the project’s ‘Story of Milk’ booklet was given to every child. The school already takes advantage of the Under 5s free milk but wants to extend milk to the rest of the school also.
Midlands
Jill Middleton in the Midlands also led a special assembly. The school she visited is hoping to introduce a pupil-led healthy tuck shop with milk on sale every day.
Wales
In advance of the big day, the School Milk Project was particularly busy in Wales, liaising with Welsh Healthy Schools coordinators with a mailout of bi-lingual resources across the whole of the country.
- Over 1000 School Milk Project packs sent out
- Over 6000 stickers
- Over 300 Healthy Choices packs
- Over 600 posters
- 0ver 1600 additional bi lingual education resource booklets sent out
In creating awareness of World School Milk Day we have had an additional 46 schools contact us over the past week who want to continue to promote milk drinking across the whole school – which is great news.
For advice and information on how to set up a scheme please refer to information provided on this site or give us a call on 0870 241 2693
On the farm with MDC school milk
19 primary school children from Calthwaite School visited Aikbank farm on Wednesday 27 June, home of MDC school milk facilitator, Jenny Turner.
Despite poor weather the children walked to the farm by foot and on arrival were particularly interested to see the John Deere tractor leaving the farm with a trailer of wool.
James Turner, the estate manager took the children on a walk through the farm looking at different crops, collecting samples and looking at the bee hives.
At break time the children were offered milk or water and all but one took milk. James then explained where milk came from. After, two Herdwick sheep were sheared and the fleece will be used in the children’s school project. Jenny followed this with a discussion on why milk is good for you, getting the children involved with counting how many cartons a day is needed to get enough calcium for a healthy balanced diet.
Jenny Turner comments: “Despite the wet weather the children remained engaged throughout the day and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Overall it was very successful.”
Diane Cannon, Project Manager of the School Milk Project says: “This is a great example of engaging children to learn about milk production in a fun and interactive way. Jenny is an established school milk facilitator in Cumbria and has been promoting the benefits of milk to children in schools across the whole area for the past four years. As a project we are looking to do more of this type of activity once the official Year of Food and Farming is launched on 1 September 2007.”
LONDON HOTPOT AND LEICESTERSHIRE PASTIES – KIDS MAKE A PICKLE OF POPULAR BRITISH FOODS
Chefs are being sent into schools, as part of British Food Fortnight’s recipe to reconnect children to British culinary classics. This initiative comes as new research from the Year of Food and Farming reveals that children in the UK are startlingly unaware of the origin of many great British foods*.
The study reveals a worrying gap in children’s grasp of home-grown delicacies.
- One half (54 per cent) do not know that pasties come from Cornwall
- Eighty per cent do not know that hotpot hails from Lancashire
- Most surprisingly, over half (57 per cent) do not know that haggis is a Scottish dish
Children do not even seem to know about foods originating in their own backyards.
- Thirteen per cent in the North West believe hotpot originated in London
- One in five (19 per cent) children in the South West believe that cheddar cheese comes from the Midlands, rather than its Somerset base
- Only 39 per cent in the North West know Manchester gave birth to Eccles cakes
In response to these sorts of mealtime muddles, this year’s British Food Fortnight is mobilising more than 9,000 volunteer chefs to go into schools and teach children about the basics of their national cuisine. Schools have also been invited to enter the British Food Fortnight ‘Cook for Life’ challenge, sponsored by Kenwood**, to identify schools that incorporate cookery in their curriculum in the most imaginative and innovative way.
Alexia Robinson, organiser of the British Food Fortnight, commented: “We desperately need to re-engage children with the pleasures of eating quality, fresh, seasonal and regionally distinct produce. The consequences of this lack of awareness amongst our children could be monumental – from obesity to falling sales for Great British products. British Food Fortnight is an annual mass movement to excite and educate young people about British food, and we believe we have the winning ingredients to help children get the measure of why their food matters.
The Year of Food and Farming should continue this good work during the coming months, inspiring a new generation of children about where their food comes from. It’s encouraging that the whole food and farming industry has come together to help educate children about British food.”
The Year of Food and Farming is focused on giving children memorable learning experience around cooking, growing and seeing food produced. From farm and rural visits to cooking, growing and work-related activities across the country, organisers are hoping to improve children’s “agricultural literacy” and transform the way the countryside is viewed, in and out of the classroom. British Food Fortnight is one of the first national initiatives on the Year’s calendar.
Tony Cooke, programme director for the Year of Food and Farming added: “British Food Fortnight is playing a crucial role in the Year by sending cooking advocates directly into the classroom. We believe this will help give children a taste for learning even more about the food chain. We need to take urgent action to educate children about the food chain to preserve the future health of our nation and the rural economy itself. We are hoping that impactful initiatives throughout the year will help excite and inspire children about their food.”
The Year of Food and Farming website, www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk gives details of all the initiatives taking place during the Year. Teachers across the UK have already been logging on, all looking for events, tips and resources to help recapture children’s imagination about where their food comes from and the countryside. Information on teaching cookery within the National Curriculum is provided on www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk. Details of chef associations that can arrange for chefs to visit schools are provided on the Teacher Zone section of the site.
The Year of Food and Farming is launched
On Wednesday September 12th 2007, HRH The Prince of Wales became the first farmer to open his gates to support the Year of Food and Farming.
As Patron for the campaign, he hosted a visit for more than 50 children, introducing them to the daily business of Duchy Home Farm.
A generation of concrete children
To reinforce the importance of such visits, findings from a new research study, overseen by psychologist Dr Aric Sigman, were released.
New data indicated that a generation of “concrete children” has become cut off from the countryside, with clear risks to both their health and wider prospects. According to the findings:
- One in five pupils never visit the countryside – indicating that more than a million children across the country have absolutely no contact with the land.
- A further 17% have only been to the countryside “once or twice”, meaning a third of children have little, if any, experience of the rural world.
- Two thirds of children with regular rural interaction say it matters where their meals comes from, versus just 40% of children who admit they never visit the countryside
- These “concrete children” are also less willing to help with meal preparation at home, and are twice as likely to admit they don’t know where everyday fruit and vegetables are grown.
The benefits of ‘green time’
Encouragingly, Dr Sigman’s review also shows the benefits of “green time” – simply being in the countryside, school garden or a leafy environment - are significant:
- Children with views of and contact with nature score higher on tests of concentration and self-discipline.
- Exposure to natural environments improves children's cognitive development by improving their awareness, reasoning and observational skills
- Results for schools with outdoor education programmes show improved performance on standardised measures of academic achievement in reading, writing, maths, science and social studies. Classroom behaviour also showed improvements.
Get Involved
With all the gains to be had from reconnecting children to the countryside, the Year is now urging farmers, food producers and schools to register on its Megamap – www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk – to give pupils hands-on, memorable learning experiences that they’ll never forget.
The Food - a fact of life wesbite provides up-to-date, accurate and consistent information about healthier eating.
The website:
- provides advice, support and downloadable resources for teachers about healthier eating in school
- contains interactive learning activities for children, as well as activity and information sheets
- supports healthy schools initiatives throughout the UK, eg, Food in Schools, Hungry for Success, 5 A DAY.
The content is carefully tailored to the teaching curriculum for five to 11 year olds. The site provides interactive activities and information sheets for children to help them discover more about the food they eat. You can download classroom and lesson resources including PowerPoint presentations, posters and activity cards. The website supports practical work with food with lots of opportunities for cooking, as well as using ICT in the classroom to learn about healthy eating.
Check out the new Cooking and Food Skills module which supports primary school children learning about food preparation and cooking. Featuring 22 exciting videos which show food skills being demonstrated and easy to follow recipes being made.
The site has been developed by the British Nutrition Foundation in association with British Meat Education Service, British Potato Council, Horticultural Development Council, Home Grown Cereals Authority and the Milk Development Council.
[click here to visit the website] [click here to view the PDF leaflet about this website]
