Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Week

In February we celebrated Children’s Mental Health Week in our classes. Each class had bespoke sessions creating or exploring resources and tools. These were used to support our understanding of our own emotions and wellbeing.

Each class did something different around the theme ‘Know yourself. Grow Yourself’ and using the ‘Inside Out’ characters.

The image shown above is the amazing zone’s of regulation poster Asteroid Class made (and then printed copies of) for the rest of the school. We love how expressive our students were with their faces capturing the different emotions.

Some of our classes have been engaging in a range of attention activities on emotions and exploring the zones of regulation.

Our infants classes had the opportunity to plant and grow their own seeds. They particularly liked exploring the soil and how they could scoop it into their pots, before planting their seeds.

Amber Class also enjoyed creating and exploring different emotion and mood characters using a variety of resources to support their understanding.

Here are some tips on how you can support your child’s understanding at home from Assistant Principal Jo Williams: 

Helping your child help recognise signals from their bodies.

Helping your child recognise signals from their body is an important step in understanding their emotions. You can support this by naming the physical cues you see and reinforce this by using visuals for different body signals and emotions. Additionally, try to help them identify what has caused these feelings and what might help them feel better. Attached is a simple emotions visual core board. If you need additional symbols or a personalised version for your child, please let your class team know, and they will be happy to help you.

Examples of modelling language: 

• “I think you feel happy, because you are in the park” (point to happy on board)
• “I think you feel sad because you are crying, what do you need?” (point to sad on board)
• “I think you feel angry because your ipad has died, lets watch the TV instead” (point to angry)
• “I think you feel hungry, come and choose a snack”
• “I think you feel angry because you are stamping your feet, what do you need? ” (point to angry)

You can also model this by talking about how you feel/what you need when you experience certain emotions. 

• “I feel happy, because its sunny and we can go outside”
• “I feel thirsty, I need a juice”
• “I feel sad, I need a hug”
• “I feel tired, I need to sit down on the sofa”