Bash Street Kids School Assembly

Below is a link to posters for you to put up in classrooms, corridors or in the assembly area. They introduce pupils to the ten Bash Street Kids characters: Teach, Fatty, Erbert, Spotty, Wilfred, Toots, Sydney, Plug, Danny and Smiffy. 5-a-day the Bash Street way posters

You could start by asking pupils how many fruit and vegetables they eat a day, getting them to raise their hands.Then ask, ‘Why do you think we want to encourage you to eat more fruit and vegetables?’

The answer is, on average, people who eat lots of fruit and vegetables tend to be healthier and live longer.

Healthy eating includes eating at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables each day.

Fruit and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals, which keep the body healthy. They also contain substances called ‘antioxidants’, which might help to protect us against damaging chemicals produced by our bodies, and found in our surroundings, for example they are found in cigarette smoke.

Fruit and vegetables also provide fibre and are low in fat and calories, so choosing them and cutting down on fatty, sugary foods can help our health in many ways.

Fresh, frozen, tinned, or dried varieties of fruit and vegetables and fruit juice are all good for us.

Fruit and vegetables and fruit juices also contain lots of water that can help replace the fluids you lose when you’re physically active and help stop you becoming dehydrated and feeling tired.

• Fruit and vegetables from around the world – where do different fruit and vegetables come from? Could link to geography or holidays
• Tasting session of unusual fruit and vegetables – link to culture
• Link to colours – fruit and vegetables have a variety of colours, colours of the rainbow
• Link to expressive words – juicy, mouth-watering, squashy, ripe, soft, crunchy, crisp and so on
• Harvest time
• Link to books that have fruit and vegetables in them
• Pupils produce a play with a fruit and vegetable theme

Five pupils each present their favourite ways of eating fruit and vegetables for:

• Breakfast
• Snack
• Lunch
• Drinks
• Evening meal

Ask the pupils to present each of the Bash Street Kids characters during school assembly. They could dress up or introduce the character using a poster or overhead.

Pupils could use the information below and add some more themselves, for example they could write a little more about each fruit and/or about the Bash Street character.

Introduction

‘Now we've got some very healthy characters who have already been spotted around school eating fruit and vegetables.’

Does anyone know who they are?

The Bash Street Kids are here in this school because they love eating fruit and vegetables. I'm going to introduce some of them to you.

Danny

Danny is bananas about bananas – they're one of his favourite fruits. Bananas are over one million years old and they are the most popular fruit in the world. A single banana counts as one of your 5 portions a day – but it's a bit strange because after Danny's eaten a banana someone always seems to slip on a banana skin!

Toots

Toots loves grapes, just like lots of children at this school. I think they help to sweeten her up – red or white – she doesn't care as long as she's got grapes. You can get grapes in two forms, fresh or dried. The dried ones are called raisins and these are just grapes that have been dried in the sun.

Erbert

Erbert loves melon – it's sweet and very refreshing. There are lots of different types of melon. There is honeydew, which is yellow on the outside. You can also get cantaloupe, which is orange inside and watermelon, which has lovely flesh and is green on the outside.

Fatty

Fatty loves berries. Here he's eating lovely juicy red raspberries, but he also loves strawberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries. They're always sweet, juicy and wonderfully soft and, because he wears a bright red jacket, you can't see where the juice has dripped!

Plug

Plug keeps his good looks by eating apples. They are crisp and crunchy and exercise his mouth so he always has the most attractive smile.

Smiffy

Smiffy eats carrots because they help him to see in the dark, which always gives him an advantage. Carrots have been around for 3000 years but the first carrots weren't actually orange. Originally they were white, purple or yellow, and it wasn't until the 1600s that orange carrots were grown by the Dutch.

Spotty

Spotty likes tangerines. They are a type of mandarin orange that are easy to peel. They contain lots of vitamin C and are sweet and juicy. Spotty says tangerines are great for snacking because they are so easy to eat and so juicy too.

Sydney

Sydney likes kiwis. He even likes to eat the fuzzy skin on the outside because it tickles his tongue. Kiwis are more than 700 years old and originally came from China when they were known as Chinese gooseberries. They were sent to New Zealand where they were grown and renamed kiwi fruit after New Zealand's national bird, the kiwi. A simple ‘Sydney way’ to eat a kiwi is to cut it in half and eat it with a spoon like an egg – so it becomes an eggstra eggciting snack to eat! Remember, with smaller fruit, two count as one portion.

Teach

Teach likes cucumber. It's crunchy and he eats it on its own as well as always having it in salad with his lunch. He's really pleased because now at this school he can get salad everyday and that's his favourite. He also eats cucumber on sandwiches or dips it into curried yoghurt. Luckily, Teach still has his own teeth so when he crunches into a big chunk of cucumber, they don't come out to scare the children.

Wilfred

Wilfred likes tomatoes. They are red, juicy and sweet and they come in lots of sizes. There are the tiny cherry tomatoes that you can pop in your mouth all in one go like Wilfred does. Or you can get big ones that Wilfred cuts in half, cooks and eats for his breakfast. This helps wise Wilfred to stay well.

This poem about eating 5-a-day could be dramatised by pupils.