How the Hartlepool Food Partnership can work with you
Encouraging healthy eating is particularly important when people are young, hopefully leading to lifelong healthy habits.
Below, please find information on what help we would love to offer in terms of activity sessions (linked to healthy eating and where food comes from), assemblies and help with food growing projects. There is also information about free printable activity sheets on our Kid’s Corner webpage as well as our soon to be published Kids’ corner free magazine for all 5-11 year-olds.
School, Nursery and Youth/HAF Group Activity Sessions
We can now visit schools, nurseries and youth/HAF groups (including home education children groups) to deliver activity sessions linked to healthy eating and where food comes from, with plenty of activity options to choose from.
For 5-11 year-olds, the sessions generally last 30-60 minutes per group (generally increasingly in duration alongside their age) though this is very adaptable. Children can discuss and try healthy foods, learn what different food plants look like prior to harvest and how different foods are good for our bodies. They can experience what fat and muscle look like and do a ‘big art attack’ of the layers of the soil with seeds then wheat plants and their roots. There are physical games, simple paper based activities and more.
For nursery-aged children, sessions last around 20 minutes and start with a fun ‘raising hands’ game about healthy food followed by a food-related story with lots of props and opportunities for the children to be involved and then some healthy food tasting linked to the story.
If your are interested in these sessions and/or would like to find out more, please do get in touch with Adam at adamguy@hartlepoolcommunitytrust.org.uk.
School Assemblies
We can also offer assemblies to schools and youth groups linked to healthy eating activities. Currently we can offer assemblies linked to designing a healthy eating themed Cartoon Mascot for the Hartlepool Food Partnership as well as our brand new 5-7 Challenge (how close can you get to eating 5+ portions of fruit and vegetables over the next 7 days?).
For both of these options worksheets will be provided to children and a follow-up assembly will be arranged. To find out more please contact Adam at adamguy@hartlepoolcommunitytrust.org.uk.
School Food Growing Projects
Often the starting point of getting children to try healthy fruit and vegetables is getting them to understand where the food comes from and be involved in growing it. We hope to help this by aiding food growing projects in Hartlepool’s schools and nurseries. This can range from raised beds in their outdoor green spaces to pots in a classroom (pictures show both indoor and outdoor plant growing, and a large bug hotel, at Aldersyde Day Nursery).
Getting children involved in food growing in schools improves their awareness and appreciation of where their food comes from and, we hope, will encourage them to try the healthy produce that they grow.
If you are a school and would like help from us on a food growing project, please get in touch at info@hartlepoolfoodpartnership.co.uk.
Printable Worksheet
Please visit our Kid’s Corner page to find more printable activity sheets for 5-11 year-olds linked to healthy eating and opportunities for children to earn certificates for trying, growing and cooking food. Activity sheets include include tick off sheets for what fruits and vegetables you have tried, wordsearches, matching fruits/vegetables and their names, colouring in pages and more. Please see two examples below:
Kids’ Corner Magazine and Scran Cookery Book
We will soon be printing Issue 1 of the new Kids’ Corner magazine, which will be freely available to all 5-11 year-olds across Hartlepool (and younger children if desired). The magazines will be full of fun activities, stories, competitions, recipes, exciting facts and more, all with a connection to healthy eating, healthy living and good dental health. Issue 2 will follow prior to the end of summer term. We hope to get as many primary schools in Hartlepool as possible distributing it to their pupils – so please get in touch if you haven’t already.
Later this year we will be making available, to all 5-11 year-olds, a free bespoke copy of the amazing 36-page Scran cookbook originally written by Youth Voice Hartlepool. Doing this we hope to get even more children across the borough cooking with their grown ups.
To register your interest about either of these free publications, please email us at info@hartlepoolfoodpartnership.co.uk.