Find out how Move Well Eat Well schools are making healthy eating and physical activity a normal, enjoyable part of every child's day by clicking on each icon.

Tap into Water Everyday

Campania District School are using a whole-school approach to encourage drinking water as the drink of choice. They have put water coolers in classrooms, water containers outside for refilling drink bottles on hot days, and are displaying posters showing the benefits of drinking water as opposed to other drinks (+ newsletter articles). Only water bottles are allowed to be kept on desks during class times.

St James Catholic College, Cygnet have installed a purpose-built water bottle refill station. They are promoting sustainability and promoting drinking water at the same time.

Somerset Primary are encouraging all students to drink water regularly by displaying Tap into Water Everyday signs in each classroom. This is also a great reminder for teachers and parents. Print 'Tap into Water Everyday' signs for your classroom.

Sheffield School's Design Technology students designed and constructed water bottle racks for all primary classes. To ensure that students are always able to access and consume water their bottles stay at school. At the beginning of the school day students select their bottle off the rack and fill it up. At the end of the day children wash their bottles and place them on the rack to dry over night.

Plant Fruit and Veg in your Lunchbox

Well done to Move Well Eat Well Award school- St Mary's College Junior School! At St Mary's College Junior School students are doing a wonderful job in their school garden growing tasty new vegetables to use in their canteen, all while reducing their ecological footprint. What a Fantastic Effort!

St Mary’s College is passionate about the local environment and reducing their ecological footprint, one step at a time. Their school canteen plays an important role in the College’s sustainability movement, which looks at positive ways that they can improve waste management practices and reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.

Initiated by the College’s student-led sustainability group, The Footprint Project, the canteen serves healthy, tasty meals while doing away with single-use products and packaging. The College has also introduced reusable plates, bowls, cups and cutlery for all staff and students to enjoy their meals. These changes have led to a significant decrease in waste volume, with only one garbage bin of rubbish now coming from the canteen each day.

Junior School students recently helped plant an edible garden and can't wait to try the broad beans, garlic, white radish, pak choi, spring onion and rocket in upcoming menu creations. What a wonderful way to Plant Fruit & Veg in your lunch box.

Souper Schools! Find out how some Move Well Eat Well Member schools have become 'Souper Schools' and made their own delicious soups.

Strahan Primary has been cooking up some amazing food for their students, and not blowing the budget.  Pizza day, pumpkin and bacon risotto, roast chicken salad with mustard dressing, pumpkin and spinach cannelloni and smoothies have all been on offer to increase the healthy offerings and to expand students' food experiences. The program revolves around "specials" being cooked and served at school, taking advantage of seasonal production in the school garden and the expertise of the school chaplain, Mr. B, and students. Mr. B chooses a recipe, always trying to expose the students to some new flavours or styles of cooking, but with simple child friendly seasoning and ingredients.

"The students help in the garden and then always harvest to add to our cooking," says Principal Courtney Howard.

"The other week we had a whole class demolish a huge bowl of roast chicken and vegetable salad on garden greens. We made a honey mustard and vinegar dressing to go with it. The 4/5/6 class prepared the meal, but I was shocked to see and hear that every one of them enjoyed it. Most of them had seconds and a few were a bit upset that we ran out when they wanted thirds," Mr Howard said.

The cooking sessions run to a tight budget, looking at around a $1 per serve on cost of goods. Sometimes a bit higher, sometimes a bit lower. The money raised from the special goes back into either subsidising cheap fruit or helping the canteen in other areas. Any overall profit goes to the Parents and Friends who put a lot of effort into major fundraising for camps, future bus replacements, etc.

It's the 'Spring lunch' at Kempton Primary School, where the school's garden provided the salad ingredients, and the quiche was made using eggs from the students' own free-range chooks. The classroom became the restaurant, and students were guided by a visiting chef in preparing and serving 65 staff, students, parents and friends. A stunning and seasonal Move Well Eat Well community event!

Evandale Primary has introduced a regular Healthy Heroes picture in their weekly parents newsletter. The idea is to promote photos of children enjoying healthy lunches and recess snacks . Teacher Alana Binns says "I try to give families ideas on healthy lunch ideas, and vary the theme each week". This week's theme was "packing a rainbow of salad vegetables". What a great idea to build a school culture that supports healthy eating.

Bicheno Primary's Kinder Prep gets started with regular fruit and veggie promotion:
Teacher Eliza Spykers tells: "I brought in an unusual vegetable (some yams) last week.  None of the students knew what it was.  We smelt them, felt them and guessed what they would taste like (sweet, sour, bitter etc).  We then cut them up and looked (and thought about what they looked like inside) and cooked them up.  The kids LOVED them!  We now have a class challenge for someone to bring in an unusual fruit or vegetable for the class to try.  On Friday I had a child bring in a blood orange - again no one knew what it was.  They all tried some and loved it!"

Taroona Primary teacher, Sue Young says, " Our F and V breaks work well because we allocate the break to occur 10 minutes just before recess. The kids are motivated because they can stop work earlier and have time to eat in class."

Hillcrest Primary School has developed a relationship with the Devonport Country Women's Association (CWA). CWA members have taught cooking skills to the grade 3/4 students with a focus on using local healthy produce eg apples, or food from the school garden.

To support the schools daily Fruit and Veg break Rosebery District School has a partnership with a local mine. Each week the mine donates a box of fruit to the school. This fruit is used for the daily fruit and veg breaks for classes K-6.

Limit 'Sometimes' Foods

West Ulverstone Primary School ran a 'Nude Food' Day to coincide with their school's Clean Up Day effort. It makes perfect sense to promote fresh food with less packaging, less litter, and eating well at the same time. West Ulverstone is sensibly weaving the 'eat well' message into the normal, everyday life at school. Nice work!

Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School decided to break with the past and not sell fizzy drinks & chips. They tossed around these ideas:

• promoting water, with ice, fancy straws
• fruit kebabs/platters
• making links with lines the canteen already sells (eg popcorn, apple spirals and muffins)
• fruit buns, small tubs of reduced fat yoghurt, vegie sticks, crackers and cheese cubes
• a trail mix with popcorn with dried fruit and cereals (e.g. Weet-Bix Bites, Mini-Wheats etc.)
• icypoles or 99% fruit juice sticks.

Invermay Primary continues to support the Limit 'Sometimes' Foods message. Invermay Primary made the decision to fundraise with all non-food related items. The most popular fundraisers were bulbs, socks and special day stalls. They also made the decision to ensure that food and drinks at the end of year Family BBQ followed the same guidelines as their Silver accredited canteen.

Scotch Oakburn Junior School make links between their canteen and the classroom. An example uses the canteen sales as a basis to expand numeracy skills of year 2 students. Students were given numeracy exercises based on the canteen menu. For example, "The tuckshop has 5 fruit salads, they started with 22, how many did they sell?"

Mount Stuart Primary talked to their Parent Association about their ideas to limit 'sometimes' foods. As a result they had a "water tank" at the school disco so children could access water at all times, and the Association became aware of the importance of not having lollies at all events.

Find more great fundraising ideas for Move Well Eat Well member schools.

Move, Play and Go

Australian Christian College in Hobart have created a daily fitness running activity for grades 3-6 with a twist! Each year there is a theme and one previous theme was 'Space' . A measured running course of 250m (1 lap) has been set up. Students run 2-4 laps (or half to 1 km) daily in the 10-15 min running time set before recess. Laps are recorded and every 4 laps (1 km) are awarded with a sticker on the class running chart. Every tenth km run receives a star on the sticker chart. Then the Space race begins!

Students decorated their own rockets to chart their race through space. With the first km run, students blasted off on route to Mercury. With every 10th km (star) achieved students reach the next planet. The goal is to reach Neptune by the end of the year. As the outer planets are much further away, 10 km are required to pass through the asteroid belt and reach Jupiter. Then 10 km are again required for the last 3.

Ten km are required to complete the race and return to the sun (a total of 100 km.) At the end of the year, ‘Running’ awards are given. Bronze = 50 km, Silver = 75km and Gold= 100. An ‘Encouragement Award’ is given for anyone reaching 40-50km for the year.

What a great way to incorporate physical activity and learning about space!

Sacred Heart Catholic School Geeveston got right into our previously run Hawthorn Way promotional week, and came out winners. Sacred Heart's entry had the whole school jumping with great food and fun, 'raw crunch in our lunch", whole school walking skipping and running, not to mention their Tap into Water Rap.

Bowen Road Primary School have introduced a great way of getting students moving at lunch time. Grade 6 'playground buddies' set up activities such as ball games and relays and Prep-grade 2s join in the fun. A great opportunity to be active and make friends with students of different ages.

Sandy Bay Infant School use peer leaders in their daily fitness program. For 2 days a week, Grade 2 leaders take small groups (Grade 1, Prep and Kinder).  They are responsible for leading the warm up, setting up the activity, running the activity and leading the cool down. They have five groups running during this time, comprising of activities such as boundary walk (walking around the perimeter of the school; up, down and over obstacles), follow the leader, rob the nest, obstacle course and hoop attack. The whole process runs for 15 minutes, including the warm up and cool down. These activities rotate each week for a total of five weeks before new activities are developed by their HPE teacher, taught to the peer leaders and then implemented by them.

Latrobe Primary School's Daily Fitness Program includes whole-school activities such as dance, aerobics and a walk around the block, as well as individual class activities. This great Program has students moving for up to 20 minutes each day, on top of their class PE time.

Bridport Primary launched 'Part Way is OK' which encourages parents to drop their children at safe, designated drop off points and walk to school with adult supervision. At the launch 36 students walked with parents and siblings joining in. When they arrived at school the local supermarket provided free fresh fruit to all walkers. The Dorset Council representatives made sure they were there to support the launch too.

Boat Harbour Primary School has been most creative in using the humble gumboot.  Making the most of wet and soggy conditions over winter, they held a Gumboot Day.  Students were encouraged to walk around the grounds in their gumboots and negotiate some 'obstacles.'  Other activities included gumboot throwing, ten-pin bowling with gumboots (instead of pins) and golf-putting (with gumboots instead of holes).

Turn Off, Switch to Play

Glen Huon Primary use their bush playground for lots of things, including active play. They have tyre swings, small bridges and obstacles built into our bush area to make it fun.  It is used a lot for Daily Fitness and PE lessons too, as well as their cross country course. Teacher Rachel Jacobs says, "It is great for lots of games we play like flags, spies and generals, orienteering and running activities."

Every Friday at Clarendon Vale Primary School the PCYC visit the school and take each class for games and activities. These activities are focussed on teaching the students team building, cooperation and how to be involved in physical activity in a safe and fun way. Activities change weekly which ensures that the students are always engaged in the program. Students love playing cooperative games with the parachute as well as using other equipment in a range of obstacle courses and exercise stations.

Stride and Ride

St Aloysius have a 'Part Way is Okay' model that they call Walking Wednesday’s – students meet  teacher at a designated point and walk to school.  This goes ahead every week rain, hail or shine.  There are strong student participation numbers each week.

Montagu Bay Primary School replaced their Easter Chocolate Fundraiser with a walkathon around their local community.

The Cottage School have regular bike days where students take their bikes and the whole school go for a ride in the local area.

Deloraine Primary School regularly walk to local excursions.

Port Sorell Primary strongly support students riding to school by holding several 'Ride to School’ days each term.  Student meet up with staff who ride to school with them.

Swansea Primary as a whole school they walk to the local nursing home in their book week costumes and also walk around the community in term 4 to sing for people.

Lindisfarne North Primary is having success with 'Part Way is OK' - encouraging parents to drop their children at safe, designated drop off point and allow them to walk part of the way to school. Teacher Amy Jones tells the story:" 'Part Way is OK' is really successful in our school. Children from K to grade 6 take part every Wednesday, weather permitting. We continue the program during the colder months, only cancelling it if it is wet. We have parents and grandparents joining us most mornings. It's really lovely seeing the older children walking with the younger children - some days we have up to 40/50 children walking. We had kinder children walking with us from week 1. They had seen their parents drop their older siblings off in previous years and couldn't wait to take part themselves."

Miandetta Primary School are encouraging active transport to school by introducing the "Golden Foot" trophy. The "Golden Foot" trophy will be awarded to the class that has had the most students that walk, ride or scoot to school each month.  The sports leaders will be involved in collating the information and presenting the trophy at a school assembly.

Summerdale Primary School have a "Ride to School Day" once a term, followed by a bike parade at lunchtime. To ensure safety during these events the school has a licence system for bike riders whereby students must demonstrate they are sensible riders and know where and how to park their bikes at School.

Health Promoting Schools: links with families, your polices, the curriculum and the community

Dodges Ferry Primary School worked on the previous Move Well Eat Well incentive 'Russell the Sheep' Curriculum Unit in their classroom. They discussed food choices, explored the word 'variety' and it's relevance for nutrition and physical activity as well as inspected some grocery store catalogues to graph the amount of food advertised in relation to the Healthy Food Plate. Next they will incorporate this in to their Olympics learning to look at the diet and exercise of our Australian athletes. Thank you and well done to Petrina and her class.

Snug Primary School's Keep Active, Keep Connected, Keep Healthy won the Premiers Physical Activity Council Award for their  multi-layered approach to physical education and healthy eating within the school. Keep Active, Keep Connected, Keep Healthy encompasses a range of different physical activities to engage all students and cater for varying levels of fitness and ability. Activities include daily physical education, a bush walking track which has recently been extended and now incorporates an outdoor learning area, a running group for parents, weekly provision of a healthy lunch, organised lunchtime games, dance extravaganza and Jump Rope for Heart. The School Association has taken a lead role inviting community members to be involved in the school activities.

Both Scotch Oakburn Junior School and Miandetta Primary have developed family information brochures, outlining Move Well Eat Well to parents and encouraging family support for the health messages.

If your school has some ideas to share with others, please contact us! We'd love to share your news and inspiration.