Mental Health Awareness week

21st - 25th January 2019

This week was our first 'Mental Health Awareness week'.  We started the week with assemblies from the ROAR response team and the children talked about how everyone has mental health and learned how our emotions can affect our mental health.  The children used the 'ROAR rainbow' (below) to discuss what number they were and what had happened to make them this number. 

They were also introduced to Resilient Ralph, who uses his special skills to 'bounce back' when he is feeling low.

The children loved the different calming and mindful activities through the week and each year group had a different theme to focus on:

Year 3 'Spreading a little kindness'

Year 4 'Being ourselves'

Year 5 'Resilience'

Year 6 'Being healthy inside and out'  

Each class practised some useful breathing techniques to help calm themselves down when feeling anxious or stressed and used 'Go Noodle' every day to help.  Parents can also sign up to the free app and use it at home.

On Wednesday 23rd January, parents were invited in for a mental health workshop and learned useful strategies on identifying and supporting mental health in children, as well as how to use the rainbow and Ralph at home.  Thank you to everyone who took part this week.  It was wonderful to see so many of you involved.

If you do need any help with mental health support, here are some useful websites you can visit:

Go Noodle (Mindfulness and breathing exercises) https://app.gonoodle.com/ 

ROAR response https://www.roarresponse.com/overview/

Liverpool CAMHS (Supporting mental health in children and families) https://www.liverpoolcamhs.com/

Place2Be (Children's mental health charity) https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/