Ridpath Junior Public School:

Health Promotion Project

How it all Began . . .

Upon entering this placement, we discovered that there was a survey called Tell Them From Me done by the students that concluded many children
feel unsafe around their peers, but look up to their teachers and the staff at the school. Knowing this, we decided to revolve our project around building
positive relationships and playing cooperatively in an effort to provide a safe environment, in which the children feel comfortable.

Project Goal
To implement oral hygiene, hand hygiene, positive relationships,
and daily physical activity within the student body.
Where & Who?
Students attending Ridpath Junior Public School in Kindergarten
through to Grade 6, located at 39 Ermatinger Street in the town
of Lakefield. This school hosts a student body of 410.

In the oral/hand hygiene presentation, we dressed up as Super Clean and Super Soap. The use of superhero costumes was decided between the
two of us, since younger children tend to look up to superheroes and we wanted to demonstrate that washing your hands and brushing your teeth is
cool, so that they would engage in the presentation and would look up to the superheroes as role models.
Leading daily physical activity was decided upon due to many indoor recesses proceeding the cold weather warnings as well as the importance of
maintaining an active lifestyle.

A Glance at our Journey . . .

Outcomes
Our original outcome goal was to deliver a proper oral and hand
hygiene presentation that is effective and engaging by the end of our
clinical experience.
It is our hope that children continue to wash their hands and brush their
teeth without having to be reminded to, both inside and outside the
school grounds, after taking part in our health promotion presentations.
We also hope children will play nicely with each other and engage in
cooperative play around the school yard and in the classroom as an
outcome of our cooperative play initiative. It is our goal to see that the
children realize physical activity plays a vital role in creating a healthy
lifestyle, in which they are willing to take part of after engaging in fun
games and activities that they have been provided with during DPA.

Take Home Message

From our time at Ridpath Junior Public School, we learned that each
child is different in how they learn and therefore our approach to
delivering our project varied with each classroom. This was an
important learning experience because it was this realization that
allowed us to deliver our health promotion projects and daily physical
activities appropriately.

Methods
In terms of our oral and hand hygiene health promotion
presentation, we researched and created an interactive and
engaging presentation using a toothbrush and tooth model,
UltraViolet light and Glo Germ kit, dressed up as superheroes,
created a book on dental health, created a song for brushing ones
teeth, and made use of colourful and informative PowerPoints.
For our positive relationships initiative, we played Warm Fuzzies
and had an interactive conversation with the children about what it
means to be a friend, how it feels to be excluded, and gave them a
challenge to say at least one nice thing a day to a friend or
classmate. We also tried enforcing positive relationships during our
time on the yard during nutritional breaks.
Lastly, in terms of leading daily physical activity, we played games
such as Fit Tac Toe, Lucky Four Corners, and Keep Ups indoors/
outdoors with fun music and brought in homemade props to make
being active enjoyable and something to look forward to.

RESEARCH POSTER PRESENTATION DESIGN 2012

www.PosterPresentations.com

Here's my toothpaste
Here's my brush
I won't hurry, I won't rush.
Working hard to keep my teeth clean
Front and back and in between
When I brush for quite a while
I will have a happy smile.
Sugar bugs will go away,
And I will have my teeth to stay

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all staff and students at Ridpath Junior Public School for accepting us with open arms to be a part of their school and for making
our community placement an enjoyable and insightful one. Ridpath Junior Public School has provided us with an opportunity to spend time with
children of all ages with each child bringing a unique personality and opportunity for growth.

NURS 2020
Created by: Alli Clarke & Jessica Callan
Preceptor: Rebecca Padgett-Goddard
Clinical instructor: Susan Fairs

Our take home message is that children must understand how to wash
their hands, brush their teeth, and stay active, in order to do so
appropriately, and to prevent the spread of germs. As nursing students,
this message is vital because it really demonstrated how important it is
to properly provide health teaching to improve ones quality of life.
Therefore this message will be carried with us as we continue our
journey in the profession of nursing.

References
Peterborough County-City Health Unit. (2015). My Life and Health.
Retrieved from http://www.pcchu.ca/my-life-health/
Ridpath Junior Public School. (2014). Welcome to our school
website! Retrieved from http://ridpath.kprdsb.ca

educating

for success