National School Meal Week

Sorry for the delay in posting. Have had horrible internet problem which has stopped me from blogging.

The week got off to a great start got with a visit to Dundonald primary School so I could give an assembly to celebrate national school meals week. The children were very attentive and fascinated by my slides of school dinners from days of old. They were also incredibly interested in the pictures of school meals from different countries and were surprisingly good at matching the dinner to the country. Mrs Duffy, the head teacher does a great job of promoting school meals and including as much cooking and growing as she can into the school year. The children were all remarkably well behaved from the smallest reception class to the mature year 6 children.

On Tuesday The Children's Food campaign hosted a round table on how we could get every school to teach food growing. Lots of big organisations supported our aim of getting food growing on the school curriculum. Merton parents has always believed that real and genuine food education will make it easier to persuade children to eat more of the foods that are good for them. Stephanie from School Food Matters was able to show us some pictures from a great project she has set up connecting an inner city school with no growing space with Westminster Cathedral garden. Sign up to her blog if you want to follow their progress.

Today Wednesday I went to the "Health and Well Being Conference in Birmingham NEC." where I gave a presentation on how to work with parents. I got the chance to listen to secondary Head, Marcia Tweltree give a fantastic presentation on how she dramaically improved lunchtimes at her school. Re aranging the timetable so every child gets a 30 min break has been key to her achievements. Marcia is a fantastic speaker who tells it warts and all. I personally think that every secondary school head and senior management team in the land should be made to watch this presentation! One of my next Merton parent website projects is to work out how we can put up a selection of good powerpoint presentations to share with other Heads/governors/caterers

Another highlight today was the opportunity to meet Arnold Fewell - the brains behind this years National School Meals Week. We have been in regular contact via twitter but today was the first time we had met in person. I think he has done a remarkable job of bringing LACA into the 21st century.