Children’s Mental Health Week – 6th to 12th February 2023
At Leigh Academy Horsmonden, we are committed to supporting the emotional health and wellbeing of pupils and staff. We know that everyone experiences life challenges that can make us vulnerable and at times, anyone may need additional emotional support. We take the view that positive mental health is everybody’s business and that we all have a role to play.
At our school we:
- Help children to understand their emotions and feelings better.
- Help children feel comfortable sharing any concerns or worries.
- Help children socially to form and maintain friendships.
- Promote self-esteem and ensure children know that they count.
- Encourage children to be confident and ‘dare to be different’.
- Help children to develop emotional resilience and to manage setbacks.
Throughout our Wellbeing section we may refer you to external websites and links, please note that we cannot accept responsibility for the content of third-party websites. Please let us know if you experience any issues with the links provided.
The following websites may also be helpful:
Physical Health
A healthy body supports a healthy mind! Try to build physical activity into each day for you and your children. Walks and runs or YouTube fitness videos are all ways to keep active. Being active doesn’t always have to be structured, a dance in your front room to your favourite music is just as good!
The Kent Resilience Hub is aimed at parents of children aged between 10 and 16. It has a range of helpful articles, tools and resources for parents and carers, so that you can increase understanding and find tools and approaches to help build your child’s resilience.
Book Recommendation: Overcoming Your Child’s Fears & Worries (A self-help guide using Cognitive Behavioural Techniques) by Cathy Creswell & Lucy Willetts
Cruse Bereavement Care have produced some tips about talking to children among their wider resources about grief and coronavirus.
Saying Goodbye and Funerals
What Skills Do You Want to Learn?
Ideas for Basic Skills & Challenges during lockdown:
- Be able to tie your shoe laces
- Be able to do your tie
- Learn to ride your bike
- Make your bed
- Tie a knot
- Learn left from right
- Learn to skip
- Say the alphabet backwards
- Sign the alphabet
- Say hello in 10 different languages
- Zip up your own coat and undo
- Lay the table for dinner
- Learn to tell the time
- Wash the car
- Make a yummy sandwich
- Make everyone in your family laugh and write down how you did it
- Throw and catch a ball
- Set a timer to get changed and the next day try and beat the time
- Peel a banana or orange
- Change your bed
- Get dressed without help
- Use a knife & fork – cut your own food up
- Unload the dishwasher
- Know and write your address
- Cook a meal for the family
- Bake a cake
- Run for ten minutes without stopping (build it up)
- Look after a part of the garden and grow flowers or vegetables (or in a pot)