19 September 2024
Dear Parents, Guardians and Students/Annwyl Rhieni, Gwarchodwyr a Myfyrwyr
Healthy Body supports Healthy Mind
If any parents reading this have ever experienced the panic of your children giving you a couple of hours notice of the ingredients they need for a food lesson in school, then be assured that we are sowing and harvesting to ease your pain.
Read on to see just how much of our produce we’ve been cooking with since we returned to school.
This week, we are celebrating the wide range of activities that we engage in to develop healthy young people with healthy habits for life.
I have to start with a photo that was captured on Tuesday in a Year 8 food lesson. It is my favourite photo of the year so far. In a moment, I’ll show you why!
A change in autumn colours and the onset of ‘pumpkin season’
September signals a change of colour in our school garden and polytunnel. The blaze and glut of red tomatoes, green beans and enormous watermelons give way to autumnal tones of pumpkin! And lots of them.
It will now be the turn of our incoming Year 7 students to tame the garden, plant the autumn crops, and harvest the pumpkins in October.
We celebrate ‘organic September’ with our truly organic produce which tastes amazing and those pumpkins will keep our Food department very busy with soups and spiced muffins to name a few.
Let’s start by sharing some photos of what our garden and polytunnel look like ‘above ground.’ Here is our pumpkin patch as well as peppers and chilli peppers. Over the summer, the Food department have frozen over twenty kilos of fresh plum tomatoes that the students will use in the autumn to make pizzas, curries and stews (to name a few). Also, we have some very plump watermelons growing well.
However, not everything that is grown organically grows in a uniform way. We love our wonky vegetables and Year 8 were about to come face to face with carrots and parsnips that haven’t been washed and bagged into neat kilo bags! They were about to come face to face with vegetables as they are freshly dug…
Of course, the produce doesn’t just magically appear in our food rooms. We would like to thank Mr Hurford and our Key Stage 4 ‘Learning in the Outdoors’ group who have been harvesting the winter veg from our raised beds. Here’s the moment they were pulled from the ground…..
As well as the vegetable soup that Year 8 have embraced, the veg is also featuring in a wide range of recipes. In their GCSE Food classes, Year 10 have been using their theory of conserving the nutritive value of vegetables by making a Chinese noodle stir-fry. All fresh ingredients came from the garden or polytunnel, including some tentative use of our fresh and spicy red chillies!
In their Hospitality and Catering class, Year 9 may well be the only year group that haven’t cooked with our fresh produce this week, but their bread shapes deserve recognition. As you can see, they have demonstrated excellent presentation skills and effort. A far cry from the attempts that many of us made to make bread in recent years.
In the summer term, Year 9 churned their own butter, learning the science behind it and then turning it into garlic butter. This was frozen over the summer and was used this week to make chicken Kyiv with sauté potatoes as a side. The students who are now in Year 10 showed great skills and the food smelt absolutely delicious.
Let us not forget our Year 12 Food Science students who have been perfecting their potato side dishes this week.
Their offer included potato rosti, fondant potatoes, duchess and Hasselback potatoes.
Well done everyone. This blog has definitely left me feeling snacky.
Onto active bodies
Now that we’ve covered the healthy eating side of life, let’s turn our attention to the wide range of activities that are offered in school as part of our extra-curricular calendar. As there are so many different opportunities we present them in two parts. The first part is the range of sports and activities, the second part is everything else, and it looks like this….
In order to ensure that all students have access to the after school activities, the school also funds an additional bus at 4:0opm on a Tuesday to Friday to get everyone home safely.
It has been hugely encouraging to see the numbers of students getting involved so far. If you haven’t joined yet, think about throwing yourself into something next week.
Also this week, we would like to congratulate Year 10 on a triumphant day at the Cardiff Rugby 7’s competition. They came home with the plate! The boys played some really expansive rugby throughout the day, showing great determination to win the plate. A superb team ethos!
Mr Peters was also very proud of our First XV on Wednesday which he described as ‘school rugby at its finest. Unfortunately, the result didn’t go our way. Llanishen 21 – 26 Bro Edern. But our boys stayed in the fight until the end. Until next week….
We finish strong this week with an opportunity for any member of our school community to take part in a vibrant and energetic Zumbathon at LHS on Friday 27th September.
This is an opportunity to move your body and to be part of organ donation week.
All staff, parents, students and members of the wider community are very welcome!
Details and the all important QR code are here ….
Until next week,
Thank you for reading/Diolch am ddarllen,
Mrs Sarah Parry, Headteacher