Children’s Mental Health Week

At nursery we are committed to helping children to learn about the importance of keeping their minds healthy just the same as their bodies and this has been highlighted even more this week as it is Children's Mental Health Week. Our learning has been linked to every child's right to get information important to their wellbeing. (UNCRC A17)

The focus for this year is ‘encouraging children, young people and adults to celebrate their uniqueness. It’s all about #BeingOurselves!’

At nursery as part of our ethos which underpins everything that we do,

• we constantly help children to develop a good self-image, self-motivation and independence as we understand that having a positive view of themselves helps them to cope with the challenges that life presents.

• We encourage our children to talk about their feelings, discuss what they like about themselves and each other and develop calm and respectful relationships as we understand that building connections with each other is so important for their own wellbeing and that of others.

• We support children to achieve their true potential by developing their creativity, nurturing their skills and inspiring them to be the very best that they can be.

This week we have had a special focus on ‘ourselves’ and the importance of looking after our minds and our emotional health and wellbeing as well as our bodies.

We have revisited The Colour Monster Story to help us to discuss and contextualise how we are feeling and why. and throughout the week we have had a focus on the colour green ( this is the Colour Monster’s calm colour) playing with green activities such as green, lavender scented dough for extra relaxation. We talked about the importance of fresh air and exercise as a way to make us feel positive and healthy and we also listened to different types of music, describing how it made us feel and especially focussing on music which made us feel relaxed or happy. At the start and end of our sessions we have read lots of other stories about feelings and about the importance of being ourselves and talked about what we like about ourselves and our friends, using the identity tree to help us. Some children said that singing and dancing with their friends made them feel happy and relaxed so on Friday we decided to get everybody singing, dancing and playing instruments as we did a follow my leader around nursery. Everyone was involved, confidently moving around nursery and expressing themselves to the music. What a positive end to the week.

For more information about Children's Mental Health Week you can follow the link below.

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