PRIMARY school children are being taught how to sneeze - to combat the spread of colds.

The pupils at Broad Oak Primary in Didsbury were shown a film teaching them how to minimise the spread of cold and flu germs by sneezing safely.

The health education lessons also included the youngsters creating characters such as Coughing Cara and Poorly Pauline.

Their drawings and stories came about after they watched animated clips on The Sneezesafe website, whose cartoons feature characters called Suki Sneeze and Nathan Noseblow.

The two Year Two classes of children aged six and seven have been learning that they should always blow their noses on tissues rather than their clothes’ sleeves and that they should throw the tissues away.

They also learned that they should wash their hands straight away before touching any food or other items so as not to stop germs spreading.

Headteacher Sheila Marchant introduced the class to try and prevent the spread of colds and bugs. She said she was pleased with how well the pupils had learned the lesson and how creative they had been.

She said: "The teachers have shown me the drawings the children made and said they were pleased they’d taken on board the messages and created their own characters such as Coughing Cara and Poorly Pauline.

"Of course a lot of parents do teach their children that they should blow their noses on a tissue rather than using their sleeves, but what we wanted to do was reinforce those messages and use a fun but educational way of helping them learn further."

After watching the clips, discussing the key points and making up their own characters and stories, the children were also encouraged to view the Sneezesafe website at home with their parents to play the online games to increase their understanding of viral infections. Mrs Marchant, who has led the school on Broad Oak Lane for 18 years, says the class was a novel way to highlight important issues within the nationally-guided curriculum programme on personal, social and health education.

She said: "The lesson focused on health and hygiene, and we incorporated science to help the children learn about the way germs and infections are spread and how they can help stop that from happening.

"At this time of year with it being so cold, there are a lot of germs and bugs about and we think it’s important that the children know how they can keep themselves and their friends and family safe and healthy. In a school of 440 pupils, if one of them gets a bug it can spread really quickly if we’re not careful."