Sean Maguire and Louis Moult’s visit to St Andrew’s primary school only reinforced PNE’s Healthy Eating and Lifestyle programme to pupils who were keen to show off what they’d been taught to the PNE duo.
One participant, PNE fan George had quite the shock when the strike force spent their afternoon at the school.
“It was gobsmacking” said George after seeing the PNE pair come into the classroom. “I didn’t realise what was happening at the time and I had to look twice before I realised who it was.
“In class with PNE, we’ve been told to drink more water, and not drink fizzy pop because it’s better for you and hydrates you - we’ve also learned today from the players that it’s very important that they do the same.”
The classwork that George alludes to is the Healthy Eating and Lifestyle programme, otherwise known as H.E.L.P which is delivered by Preston North End’s schools team, otherwise known as the PL Primary Stars initiative.
The six week programme aims to help children identify healthy and unhealthy foods, make healthy swaps as well as learning about their body and what it needs to stay healthy, hygienic and active, and it’s a thought process which teacher, Mr Stamp believes is invaluable to the Preston community.
“We’ve had links with PNE for many years now” said the St Andrew’s teacher whose class has been a part of the initiative.
“It’s been great to see how the children have been taking positive healthy messages on board. These messages are told in school anyway but it’s really beneficial to have them reiterated to the children.
"The children have been really engaged by doing it in a real fun and practical way, to reinforce how important it is to eat and drink healthy. The impact it can have on their life and in the future shouldn’t be dismissed.
“Some of the conversations about what they eat has been a lot more thoughtful and they’ve had conversations with their parents about it who then tell us and we hope that has an impact on their family home.
“The more schools that are doing it and the more links there are to the likes of PNE who are saying the same thing, it’s only going to help more families across our city to live healthier lives.
“Children are often more engaged when it’s somebody else coming in. It’s PNE coming in and it’s exciting and different.”
Another engaged participant from the programme was KS2 pupil Emily, whose highlight from H.E.L.P was having two footballers in Moult and Maguire come and visit them, and answer their questions.
“I’ve had lots of fun because some of the questions were quite funny and it was good to know about all of the different things that footballers have to do" said Emily.
“It was very exciting seeing them in our classroom. They spoke about eating lots of carbohydrates the night before because they slowly release energy and just generally encouraged us to eat more healthily.”
If you want to reinforce that healthy message to your school, get in touch with our schools team by emailing Harriet@pne.comor call 01772 693309 to find out more.