Supporting our children and families
Health and Wellbeing
Mindful Breathing
Your child already should know a range of breathing techniques including petal breathing, belly breathing and star breathing. This short clip should encourage them to use their breathing skills to help them to remain present.
Mentally healthy schools’ resources
This useful link is full of resources that you can use to support your child’s mental health whenever they might need it. Have a browse through and make use of this great resource.
Reframing our thinking about problems
https://www.youtube.com/embed/u2junGZMkwA
A short clip to watch about being mindful in the questions we ask. It encourages us to think about how by rewording our questions, we can think about the solution rather than focusing on a problem.
We as a school have subscribed to the Happy News newspaper so that children have opportunities to read positive news stories. The newspapers are in our school library for the children to read. However, there is no reason they couldn’t create their own Happy News. This pack includes all the tools they might need to make this happen.
Growth Mindset guide for Parents
This might help you to identify ways in which you can adopt a growth mindset approach into your homes. This is a guide we follow as a school, so the children are used to being reminded to have a growth mindset. We have seen lots of positive results from it, hopefully you will too at home.
Spend some time each day discussing what you are grateful for. Sometimes life can feel tough, media outlets often sharing negative news, however we have lots to be grateful for. We can be grateful for spending time with loved ones, grateful for sunshine, grateful for a new skill we have learnt etc.
Wishes and dreams jar
Choose a jar or container in your house. Label it “Wishes and Dreams.” Every time you think to do something that you currently are unable to do or goals you would like to achieve, write it down on a piece of paper and put it into the jar. This jar can be your bucket list for the next year and you can create lots of memories completing all the activities.
Useful child-friendly apps
These are just a few apps that might give children to opportunity to be mindful for a couple moments during their day.
- Headspace – makes meditation accessible to everybody within the home.
- CALM – there is a free version of this app which helps with relaxation, meditation and reducing stress and anxiety.
- Recharge – it helps you to get into a good sleep routine, by encouraging you to wake up, get up and do fun activities.
- Smiling mind – mindfulness and meditation activities to take part in
Grown ups – Looking after your mental health
This is a leaflet (produced by the Local Councils) signposting you to the services that are currently available to support you with your mental health. There are also some hints and tips included. Remember, it is OK not to be OK and recognising that you need to seek additional support is good. This is aimed at adults but there may be some useful advice that can help your child too