Youngsters bring family to school to get fit

Pupils from Notre Dame School brought their parents, guardians or grandparents to school yesterday to take part in its Health and Fitness Day.
The children and adults took part in Yoga, Pilates, Zumba, football skills, team games and numerous of other activities that the staff delivered throughout the day.

Gaylee Gracia, the Physical Education coordinator at the school, is the organiser behind the day’s events.
“We have been doing fitness day for the past two years and obviously every year we try to make it bigger and better,” said Mrs Gracia.
“Health and Fitness Day is to promote leading and healthy and active lifestyle and we want to promote that across the school and across the community,” she added.
The children were also learning about the health side of the day, especially regarding eating healthy snacks and avoiding those that contain added sugar.
“We find a lot of sugar in the snacks that they [the pupils] bring and we want to move away from that,” said Mrs Gracia.
“Today we have encouraged them to bring a healthy snack,” she added.

Hygiene also formed part of the awareness and educational aspect of the day with pupils from the lower classes learning about the importance of washing their hands properly in order to keep healthy.
“We have also had a lot of support from the parents, they also helped fundraise for the charity Pathway Through Pain,” said Mrs Gracia. As money is still coming in the school does not know how much was raised yet.

Staff members also participated in a ‘Run Happy Runathon’ event, which saw them run a certain course via different parts of the school including the playground throughout the whole day, with each staff member participating in rotation.