‘Get Together’ with Success4All

On Friday the 4th of May, we celebrated #CBWkd2018 with parents in our local community. The Day highlighted the opinions and suggestions that parents had about the Success4All learning Hubs and Clubs. Many of the parents attending had heard about our Learning Hubs and wanted to simply find our more.

We started with discussing the education system and what they already knew about their children’s schooling. This lead on to any concerns that the parents had about what they didn’t understand. We talked about ability grouping, class room sizing, catchment areas.

Parents interested in Success4All’s plans for the future. The day was an opportunity to explore the needs of our parents ranging from low cost Child care to academic support for their children, and how could improve what we offer at our learning Hubs.

#LocalPeopleLocalPower

During this consultation with parents, our Volunteers and staff took part in a training in using engagement tools. We were visited by from . The tools they introduced are derived by the ‘Go-Mad thinking’ philosophy by professionals in Leicestershire.

At the Throckley Learning Hub, our Learning Hub Coordinator Eve organised a Healthy Eating Campaign. This was to allow the children that attend the learning hub to learn more about the things that they eat and how this can affect them. We wanted to show how some of our favourite snacks may not be very good for our bodies due to the high levels of sugar that they contain.

The first activity that the children took part in was taste testing different snacks. They weren’t told much about them, just that everyone could try them and to fill in a survey about what they thought about each snack they tried. To begin with many of the children were a little hesitant as some the snacks were new to them.  However, after some encouragement many of them were pleasantly surprised. Here is some of their feedback.

Next, everyone came back together as a group to discuss their thoughts on the food. We looked at how some of these foods tasted good and were also good for us: for example, how the guacamole contained avocados which are full of good fats.

The group was split into two for the next activity where they would break down what is in the foods that they eat. One group were taught how to understand the nutritional values on the packaging of different foods, and what this meant. Many were surprised by how much sugar can be found in savoury foods as they do not taste sweet. They were able to compare healthy to unhealthy foods and what nutritional differences they have.

The other group did a sugar weigh in where they measured out how much sugar is in the snacks they usually have. Did you know that a can of Coca Cola has 39g of Sugar?! This was really interesting as even some of the volunteers were shocked by what that amount of sugar looked like.

During the event, we learnt that high levels of sugar can have negative effects on our teeth and can cause then to rot. We also learnt that when we have too much sugar, it ca affect our learning as we may have lots of energy straight after the sugar, however, this can drop really low after a short while leaving us with a very low amount of energy which makes it difficult for us to concentrate and learn:

What is a Sugar Crash? – When we have so much sugar, that instead of having high levels of energy, we experience a headache, anxiety, tiredness, being irritable; this is because our bodies can’t cope with this amount of sugar.

We hope that everyone who took part in the Healthy Eating Campaign learnt something new and enjoyed the session.