Looking After Children's Mental Well-Being
Our School Strategy
We have been developing a whole school strategy to develop wellbeing.
We have combined together two different approaches to developing wellbeing to make our own unique strategy.
Action For Happiness are an organisation that identifies 10 Keys to Happiness.
The ten keys represent the acronym GREAT DREAM.
The first five keys GREAT relate to how we interact with the outside world in our daily activities.
The second five keys DREAM, come from inside us and how they depend on our attitude to life.
The second approach is based on some characters known as the Worry Woos.
Children need to be able to identify key emotions; to recognise the emotions they are feeling, to be able to articulate why they are feeling this emotion and most importantly identify strategies, including external support agencies which will help them to deal with differing emotions faced at different points in the daily life.
Children need a common language that it used and understood by all in school. Implementation of the Woo Woo characters enables children to have a hook through characters, stories and discussion to explore emotions
A Parents Guide to our school strategy
Useful parent guides to talk about Mental health
Well-being Champions
In school we thought about small and big feelings, who can help us, how we might ask for help and how do we show we are listening.
Here is a copy of the videos we watched.
Clink on the link below.
The children were asked to think whether they would like to apply for the job of a Wellbeing Champion School (it's not paid).
We talked about a job description. Children completed an application form.
We have chosen our Wellbeing Champions. Names and photographs will appear soon.
Our first meeting will be about how children want information to be communicated in different ways.
These are the forms the children completed.
Do you fancy the challenge of kickstarting a healthier lifestyle within your family?
We have been given free access to a children's book to explain loneliness. Loneliness is a very difficult emotion for children to understand at anytime. At the moment, missing friends and family, this is even tougher.
Download the book below in order to read it with your child. You don't need to print it.