During our whole school topic, 'Discovering Southbourne', we in year 5 have been discovering how healthy Southbourne is. Year 5 focused on health and fitness when we visited Bourne Leisure centre, and specifically whether we could create fitness equipment for our school grounds that all children could use.

As part of a technology and engineering project the children have looked at different fitness equipment that could be used around the school grounds to keep people healthy. They have designed and built prototypes working with a range of materials before evaluating their effectiveness.

In science they have been gaining an understanding of microbes and how some microbes are useful, for example; yeast, and some microbes are harmful, for example; the flu virus. The children favourite experiment was the great yeast race. During this experiment they tested to see which conditions were best for microbes to grow. In addition, children were given the opportunity to to explore the Tesco store and discover how microbes impact how they have to organise their store.

This project has been enjoyed by all children and staff alike. It has been a great opportunity to explore our local area and further afield as well as see what makes people healthy and how we can best stay healthy.