Wellbeing Champions
Meet our new Wellbeing Champions!
Our Wellbeing Champions are the voice of Oatlands Junior School, helping to promote wellbeing for all and help others around them.
The Wellbeing Champions meet regularly with Mrs Fretwell . During the year, we will be looking at the national events that we want to take part in and what exactly we want to do in school. We are looking forward this year to choosing a special local charity that we want to support and will be thinking of a new fundraiser for everyone at OJS to take part in.
Saint Michael's Jumpathon
Our main project this year has been to support a local charity. The Wellbeing Champions spent time in September researching which charities they might like to help and after creating a shortlist, St. Michael’s Hospice was chosen. The proximity of the hospice makes it our nearest charity. After taking the decision to support them, the WBCs met with Jess, one of the Community Fundraisers to discuss what we could do the help. It was the Wellbeing Champions who decided on what sort of fundraiser to do and after a meeting with Mrs Scarth, the St. Michael’s Jumpathon was created! Quite simply, the children were sponsored to see how many star jumps they could do in a daily 5 minute slot for a week. The Wellbeing Champions wrote letters to the parents, created posters to go up around school, made sponsor forms for every child in class and promoted the event in school. They even sorted a text message (via the office!) to remind parents/families to get sponsoring.
Just before the event, the children walked to the hospice and spent the morning there. They met some of the doctors, other fundraisers, the chef and had a tour of the grounds. This enabled them to come back to Oatlands Junior School and prepare an assembly for the whole school to tell them how important the work of a hospice is and how much money is needed to keep it going.
The Jumpathon was a really fun event in school – children were literally star jumping through the gates every morning! The number of star jumps completed was phenomenal!
When the Wellbeing Champions started this project, they did not envisage being able to raise so much money! The grand total was revealed in an assembly, when Jess and Sandra from Saint Michael's came to visit us again. We raised £4358.02!
This total was down to all the Oatlands Junior School children who were such enthusiastic star jumpers – it was amazing to see them jump!
It was also down to the teachers for finding time every day to allow the children to complete their star jumps and record them – I think everyone was surprised with just how many jumps they were able to do each day. The class who did the most star jumps during the week was Lemurs - they became the proud owners of Michael the bunny for their efforts!
And also all the parents, carers, family and friends who sponsored the children. Every penny raised went towards a great cause.
But the real stars of this event were the Wellbeing Champions who worked really hard on the project.
