Medtronic Healthy Living

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Thanks to Medtronic Foundation in Galway, our school has been chosen to participate in the "Medtronic Healthy Living project 2010". This means that Medtronic have very kindly sponsored our school in building a school garden, under the excellent guidance of Ms. Kay Synott, and in inviting Mr. Brendan Smith of DERI to visit our school to tell us all about how to live in a healthy way.

Today, Brendan and Kay came to visit the Senior Infant classes. While Kay continued to plant the school garden with children from Ms. McLoughlin's and Mrs. Newell's classes, Brendan had a fascinating presentation for the children in Ms. Flannery's, Mrs. Treacy's, Mrs. Geraghty's, Ms. Gilligan's, Ms. Flaherty's, Mrs. Newell's and Ms. McLoughlin's classes. We learned such a lot in a very interesting way. Here are some of the very interesting things we learned from Brendan:

• all living things need energy - we get energy from food and from the air around us
• all trees have lots of animal, insect and fungi life around them - the oak tree has up to 450 types of animal and plant life living with it
• that we breathe in Oxygen (O2) and breathe out Carbon Dioxide (CO2), plants and trees do the opposite - they breathe in CO2 and breathe out O2. We need lots of trees and plants around us so that we have plenty of clean Oxygen to breathe
• If there is too much CO2 we get the greenhouse effect - the heat on our planet gets trapped and this keeps our planet too warm, causing ice to melt, which is a huge problem for the dwindling numbers (20,000) of polar bears left on this planet
• We cut down on CO2 emessions by planting trees. Trees are often cut down for wood (desks, houses etc) or so food can be grown on land. We need to plant more and look after the trees we have on this planet
• Our organs - heart, lungs, digestive system, circulatory system (all explained with really interesting and easy to follow diagrams). Did you know that * if you joined all your blood vessels together they would wrap round the earth 4 times? * adults have 10 litres of blood in their bodies *your heart is the same size as your fist * it takes 24 hours to digest your food
• We learned about the food pyramid, and saw pictures of what would happen if you ate too much of the wrong foods, too little food, no food at all, too much food
• We learned about fish oils, the life cycle of the salmon, the legend of Fionn and the Salmon of Knowledge
• We learned about vitamins and water (70% of our bodies are made of water)
• That most pirates were ugly, because all their teeth were rotten and fell out because they had a disease called Scurvy which they got because they didn't eat any Vitamin C (the vitamin you get in Citrus fruits like oranges, lemons and limes)
• Dangers of pollution to fish and turtles
• How to prevent pollution and to clean up litter
• How we will be able to eat food from our garden that will give us lots of vitamins and keep us healthy. What exactly an "organic garden" is - no artificial fertiliser or pest or weed killers

We finished up by watching an excellent video on Swans, made by 6th class in the Claddagh National school in Galway - well done class, we were so impressed and learned lots about swans by watching your video.

Well done to Brendan for a super super presentation, and for all the really interesting slides and photos you showed us, and the interesting things you told us. We will try to eat healthy food, exercise in a healthy way, keep everywhere clean and litter free and look after ourselves and our planet as best we can. Here is a picture of him taking a photo of our school garden. Wait till he sees it next time!