Activities related to Children’s Mental Health Week have been taking place in St Michael’s since Monday. The theme this year is Let’s Connect. We have been speaking about why having healthy connections are important
Let’s Connect is about making meaningful connections for all, during Children’s Mental Health Week – and beyond. People thrive in communities, and this connection is vital for our wellbeing.
When we have healthy connections – to family, friends and others – this can support our mental health and our sense of wellbeing. And when our need for rewarding social connections is not met, we can sometimes feel isolated and lonely – which can have a negative impact on our mental health.
For Children’s Mental Health Week 2023, we’re encouraging people to connect with others in healthy, rewarding and meaningful ways.
We have been exploring healthy connections all week and the children have taken time to think about their connections and what helps to keep them feeling happy. Year 2 and Year 3 discussed things that make them happy and things that may make them sad. They spoke about what they like to do when they want to feel better. Then discussed how we can ‘connect’ with each other, help each other and find out what we like to do.
The children walked around and found others that enjoyed doing the same activities by asking questions such as, Who likes swimming? Who has a brother?
Year 3 used a similar idea to find out something new about their classmates, something that they did not know before, quite a nice task to connect with someone better. They also did some Moodboosters on the BBC.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/moodboosters
Another activity was to create acrostic ‘Let’s Connect’ poems. Year 4 wrote some amazing poems, please see a selection here.
Love is where kindness begins Everyone needs to share Talk if you like to connect Speak up and be happy Come where you are comfortable One heart is another journey Never be afraid to talk about your feelings Noble people - be kind Everybody ends up with kind people Connecting is the key Try to be kind
On Friday, the children were invited to Dress to Express who they are and fundraise for Place2Be, the organisers of this week. Our fundraising will help to raise awareness and get us closer to a future where children don’t have to face mental health struggles alone.
Friday saw Year 6 get involved with line dancing – Oti Mabuse style! One year 6 child put it like this, “Line dances help us in class connect because you have to work together.”
We dressed to express and gave our support to Place2Be, a charity to support children’s mental health. Thank you for showing kindness in expressing yourselves.
THANK YOU – Your kind donations raise £127 for Place2Be