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Wellbeing and Mental Health Awareness
Welcome to our school’s Wellbeing page!
"Children's mental wellbeing is so vitally important. Happier children learn more and are much more likely to reach their potential" - @actionforhappiness
At Preston CofE Primary School, we aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing for our whole school community (children, staff, parents and carers), and recognise how important mental health and emotional wellbeing is to our lives in just the same way as physical health. We recognise that children’s mental health is a crucial factor in their overall wellbeing and can affect their learning and achievement.
Our Positivity Video
Hornbeam class have been working on a project to give others ideas to keep positive. The children brainstormed different techniques they use to cheer themselves up when they are feeling down.
Children's Mental Health Week - February 5th 2024
This year's theme is "My voice matters".
To celebrate Mental Health Week, we have engaged in meaningful discussions about the importance of mental health and well-being. We explored the concept of mental health, discovering what contributes to a healthy mindset and how it is just as crucial as physical health. Emphasising the connection between a balanced diet and mental well-being, we delved into the significance of eating healthily for both our bodies and minds. As part of our activities, we had the pleasure of reading Charlie Mackesy's heartwarming book, "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse." Through this enchanting tale, we explored the characters' emotions, their unique ways of expressing themselves, and the profound messages that the author, Charlie Mackesy, aims to convey. This week served as an opportunity for our students to foster a greater understanding of mental health, emphasising the importance of empathy, self-expression, and overall well-being.
Talking to your child about mental health
HelloYellow
From all of us at Preston CofE Primary School, we wanted to say a huge thank you to you all for supporting YoungMinds #HelloYellow day held on 13th October 2023 for World Mental Health Day.
Young people are experiencing a unique set of pressures for a generation growing up, living through a pandemic and cost of living crisis against the backdrop of global instability, combined with other factors such as academic pressure, all of which is taking a toll on their mental health.
YoungMinds help to support young people so they don’t feel alone with their mental health. The pupils joined thousands of schoolchildren across the country swapping their school uniform for #HelloYellow at a time when more children and young people than ever before are struggling with their mental health. Over 1.2m under 18s were referred to children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) last year, an increase of 53% since 2019.*
As the world is becoming more and more online, we have signposted below helpful websites for you to visit.
We have also found wellbeing apps that may be appropriate for you to show your children at home.
The following website shares a variety of apps for learning about emotions, managing anxiety, aiding sleep, keeping well physically and general wellbeing. There are also specific SEN wellbeing apps.
First produced by the New Economics Foundation in 2008, the #FiveWaysToWellbeing research resulted in 5 steps that we can all take to improve our wellbeing.
Summer Term - Let's be more mindful...
The Wellbeing Ambassadors have been thinking about our 5 Wellbeing values on our school website and this term they wanted to raise the profile of the ‘Take Notice’ one. We have therefore come up with some ideas and then found or made posters with things to do to help when you are feeling stressed or want to take more notice of what is around you.
We hope they can help...
Wellbeing Ambassadors' Spring Term Challenge
Learn Something New Challenge!
Researchers found that learning new skills makes us happier and healthier. By challenging ourselves to learn new things (even if we might not be very good at them at first), we actually feel better about ourselves.
The Wellbeing Ambassadors asked all pupils to challenge themselves to learn something completely new in the Spring Term! So many children took up this challenge and did brilliantly. The Wellbeing Ambassadors were very impressed and many children got their 5 Team Points and a certificate!
Well done to all who learnt something new for our Spring Challenge.
Wellbeing Award
Somerset County Council have awarded us a Wellbeing Award for Developing a Sense of Belonging as part of our work to adopt a whole school approach to wellbeing.
Feeling a sense of belonging is fundamental to positive wellbeing. When children feel they belong, it creates connection, safety, and purpose for them. It’s essential that all children are seen, heard, and valued as it leads to better resilience and mental health throughout their lives.
They felt that our key our key areas of success were:
• Established a community of pupil wellbeing champions, to provide peer support
• A commitment to creating a whole school community which promotes and celebrates emotional health and wellbeing (parents, staff and pupils)
• Celebrating diversity within the school community, recognising, and supporting the needs of military families
• Understanding the wellbeing needs of pupils and parents, prioritising areas for improvement as well as celebrating good practice
May Mental Health Week: 9th May - 15th May
The theme for Mental Health Week has been loneliness. The children have been discussing how we can prevent loneliness and what we can do to help each other.
We talked about the impact that COVID has had on people of all ages, and in particular spoke about the residents at West Abbey Care Home.
Children from across the school have come up with letters and cards that we have sent to the residents to remind them that they are not alone!
Children's Mental Health Week
7th - 13th February
This year's theme for Children's Mental Health Week is Growing Together.
Growing Together is about growing emotionally and finding ways to help each other grow. Challenges and setbacks can help us to grow and adapt and trying new things can help us to move beyond our comfort zone into a new realm of possibility and potential. However, emotional growth is often a gradual process that happens over time, and sometimes we might feel a bit ‘stuck’.
Each class were given sunflower seeds to plant and nuture, which will show the children how, like plants, we need to care for ourselves in order to grow.
The children began the week with "Wear your scarf to school day" where they discussed how they could relate the SCARF values to their lives:
Safety
Caring
Achievement
Resilience
Friendship
Children have participated in a variety of activities this week. Some of these include writing down ideas to keep their minds healthy in Year 2, creating our "brain trees" in Year 5, and painting log slices different colours to represent different emotions throughout the school.
We want to ensure that pupils, parents and staff can easily access resources to support their well-being.
There are numerous links to advice and tips that cover many aspects of mental health. Therefore, we have selected a range of resources to direct you to the appropriate support to help your children and family. We recognise that emotional health and wellbeing has a significant impact on everyone’s lives. Hence, during the current climate, the element of uncertainty and change to usual routine has been unsettling for many.
As a result, you may find yourself dealing with different behaviours or want to know how you can help the people around you. These resources can help you in: supporting anxiety, calming techniques; tips to support mental health and support services.
As a school, we aim to help our community by understanding how we can maintain and look after our well-being so please don’t forget that we are available via the Year Group emails as well as the usual school contact number to help you with any concerns you have regarding wellbeing. We hope the following links provide quick access to clear advice.
#HelloYellow
A sea of yellow entered our gates here at Preston Primary for World Mental Health Day. Aiming to raise awareness for the importance of looking after pupils' mental health, we decided to raise money for the charity YoungMinds with a #HelloYellow event. Spreading positivity, we discussed why we should talk about how we feel and motivating our peers. Every class made their own contribution, including; learning calming meditation methods, sharing what helps lift our moods, some fun photoshoots and much more!
We hope our #HelloYellow day reminded our children all to continue to be kind to one another and keep positive about the future going forward.
We raised a FANTASTIC £373.82 for the wonderful charity.
