Hampshire County Caterers wrote letter to the children in Year 4 asking them for some fresh ideas for school picnic options.

Children were asked to design, make and advertise a new picnic option for school lunches. They had to consider what makes a balanced diet, different nutritional values of food and how it can have a positive or negative impact on your body.

Kirsten B and Millie T have written a recount of their journey.

To prepare for our learning event, we participated in two healthy eating workshops. The first one we learnt about tropical fruits such as pineapples but we also got to try a range of different British fruits which were donated by Tesco.

The second was change 4 life workshop, we had the opportunity to taste and learn about exotic fruits. We also learnt about unhealthy drinks as part of explaining the difference between healthy and unhealthy eating.

To demonstrate what we had learnt, in groups, we came up with a healthy school picnic lunch option. We decided on all the ingredients that would create our packed lunch. Once we had agreed on everything we would use, the teachers showed us the 5 criteria questions that our power point presentations would be based on. As a team, each group had to put together a presentation to share during the learning event; this would show everything we’d learnt. Each group had only two days to pull together and rehearse their presentations.

Many parents attended the learning event to watch their children present their ideas one at a time before parents voted for their favourite healthy lunch box. The vote was conducted by using ballot slips with each of the groups’ names on. After the vote, the slips were handed to the teachers or School Council representatives who counted up the number of votes for each team. Winners were from each class were lucky enough to receive a tour of the kitchen whilst presenting their ideas to the Kitchen staff who would decide on the overall year group winner.

Congratulations to the winning team, The Marshmallows. Their design was chosen as the idea of creating your own wrap using the ingredients inside the picnic box was unique. Their picnic option will be available for the school to order Wednesday 19th July.

The Year 4 children and teachers would like to say thank you to the Hampshire Catering team for their support and to all parents who attended the Learning Event.

Here are the presentation slides that winning team Marshmallows used to explain their idea: