by Stanley Kawase Harrison 7G and Kiaan Khera 7G

Intro

Challenge Day 2025 was an unforgettable event! All the students left their houses and joined new groups created by the teachers. It was a fantastic chance to make friends from other houses and sharpen our problem-solving, guessing, and physical skills. With 15 teams competing, every challenge earned points, and the team with the highest score won. This year was super close—only five points separated first and third place! The theme focused on how eating the right foods helps keep us healthy.

Starting Point

At the start, half of each group got a worksheet with pictures of fruits. The goal was to name each fruit correctly to score points. It seemed easy at first, but soon we realized the tricky truth: some "bananas" weren’t bananas, "pineapples" weren’t pineapples, and the "grapes" were definitely not grapes! This tough puzzle left every group puzzled about what to answer. Meanwhile, the other half worked on naming the unhealthiest foods from a list including Haribo, Kit Kats, and Pringles. They studied pie charts showing calories and sugar levels. Though results varied, this part was straightforward. The teachers, however, kept the scores a secret.

Discussion and Demonstration

Next, we had a talk about how a balanced diet is essential for a long, healthy life. To show this, they used a tube as a blood artery, sausages as fat blockages, and wine as blood. First, they poured wine through the tube into a bucket, showing blood flowing freely. Then they added one sausage and poured the wine again—this time, less wine made it through. Finally, they filled the tube with sausages, and almost no wine passed through. After removing the sausages, the wine flowed freely once more. This demo clearly showed that eating too much fat can block blood flow, which might lead to heart problems later on.

Making a Healthy dish

Inspired by this talk, each group was to make a healthy yet delicious dish, under a low budget of 5 pounds! Half of the groups were directed towards Asda, while the other half were shown to Sainsbury's. Most groups decided to make sandwiches, as that was the cheapest option. The most challenging part was balancing a tasty meal with a healthy one. Each group had to choose a leader to make the final decisions, and a banker to make all money choices.

Group 10’s (Stanley’s group) dish

At the start, each group chose a banker and a group leader. After electing Abhiyan from Lenham as the Group Leader and Spandan from Manor as the Banker, we went to ASDA, and we quickly found that the products they provided weren’t cheap. We had to focus on the cheapest version of each product, buying Gouda cheese and Chicken slices. We then decided to treat our taste testers by buying Robison’s fruit juice and a Muller Corner with strawberry jam. We knew that we had used the money as well as we could, even though Owen from Lenham had bought Krispy Kreme doughnuts. On a healthy lifestyle challenge day! We then returned to school and started making a sandwich. Making the sandwich was a disaster, with sour cream everywhere and uncuttable cheese, but we tidied up and ended up with a presentable and acceptable product, which the VIP taste testers, Mr. Cloves and Mr. Green, loved. However, it wasn’t enough to come out on top of the other groups.                                                                                            

Group 9’s (Kiaan’s Group) dish

Our group picked Kirath as the leader and me as the banker. We headed to Asda, but honestly, we had no idea what to do at first. We grabbed a salad and a drink to start, but that left us with hardly any money for the main meal. After some debate, Kirath chose a sandwich for the main, so sadly, we had to ditch the salad. We even thought about getting some fancy cheese, but the price scared us off. Instead, we bought healthy brown bread and cucumbers for the sandwich. We also grabbed a pot of yogurt for dessert. Seeing how much cash we had left, we added some feta cheese to the sandwich. At the last moment, I convinced Kirath to spend the remaining money on coriander to spice it up. Before checking out, we made sure our meal had the perfect balance of food groups to keep it healthy and tasty! The taste testers were Mr. Cloves and Mr. Green, who loved the taste of the sandwich, and the healthiness of our product was good as well.

Mini Olympics

In our groups, we had a mini-Olympic sports competition, which included the following events: Rowing machine, where you had to row as many miles as possible collectively in your team, with one minute each, Basketball, where, one by one, you would each attempt to score a basket from the same distance numerous times until the time was over, and relay, where the racers from each team would hold a baton, run from one end to another, then pass it on to the next person until the time ran out, the goal being to get as many people finishing the race as possible. At a time, 5 groups would be doing each activity, and would switch when the time ran out. It was very competitive, as this was the largest point scorer of the day.

Finishing Point

After a long, exhausting day filled with hard work, all 15 groups gathered in the main hall, eyes fixed on the stage. You could hear a pin drop as the final results were about to be revealed. The scores were incredibly close but the top three groups were 3,9 and 14! Suddenly, group 14 erupted in cheers. The rest of the room fell silent—some students stared at the floor; others blamed their group mates as victory slipped away. Group 9 came second, Group 3 came third.

Overview

It was a great first for all of year 7 and I'm sure that everyone greatly enjoyed the experience and took away lots of information on healthy living from the experience.