Christ Church C of E Primary School
Health and Well-being
At Christ Church School we strive for all our pupils to have positive mental, emotional, social and physical well-being and we have 9 members of staff that have undertaken the Mental Health First Aider Awareness training.
What is good mental health and well-being?
Being healthy means much more than having nutritious food and being free from illness. For young children being special to and cared for by someone who is important to them is essential for their physical, social and emotional Health and Well-being. Health and Well-being underpins and determines children’s responses to their environment, to people and to new experiences. Emotional well-being includes relationships, which are close, warm and supportive, and being able to express feelings such as joy, grief, frustration and fear. This leads to the development of coping strategies when faced with new, challenging or stressful situations. Early emotional health and freedom from stress bodes well for mind, brain and body.
Health and Well-being for young children means that they lead healthy lifestyles, are physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, spiritually and environmentally healthy. At school we work to ensure children have opportunities to engage in physical play, eat a balanced diet and learn about healthy eating and lifestyles. Learning through health and well-being enables children and young people to make informed decisions in order to improve their mental, emotional, social and physical well-being. School will support children in developing a range of coping strategies which are important life long skills children can take forward to adulthood.
Wellbeing skills to practise
Benefits of focused breathing
Look at how you can calm your emotions by breathing.
Helps to calm the mind
Can help you to stop worrying
Encourages focus
Mindful Movements
Sing and dance to Ah Yay!
Hand Massage
Benefits of massage
Helps to relax muscles,
Makes us feel good and cared for
Can help sleep
It can help boost immunity
At Christ Church school we support our children with teaching the skills for life program. Children are taught how to cope with everyday difficulties, how to communicate with and get on with other people, and build self-awareness and emotional resilience. The lessons taught are based around characters Zippy and Apple and their life stories, giving the children opportunities to discuss and share ideas and build their own bank of coping strategies. In the upper Juniors we move onto using Passport and the SPARKS resilience programme that supports Year 6 children moving onto Secondary school.
Children from Year 1 to Year 6 progressively build their skills covering feelings, friendship, communication, conflict, change and loss and moving forward.
Resources are available for parents to support children at home. Please see the link below.
https://www.partnershipforchildren.org.uk/what-we-do/resources-for-parents.html
Each Wednesday the whole school have the opportunity to practice and build their wellbeing tool kit. These tools will help to support our pupils in everyday life. These tools can support children to calm down when feeling upset or angry. They can help to reduce worries and anxiety. They can even help us to focus on our learning.
Please click on this link to see Wellbeing Wednesday examples
Week 1
Check in - How are you feeling? What can we do to make ourselves feel better?
Week 2
Breathing - Five finger breathing, Square breathing, Cool out breathe, etc
Week 3
Mindfulness - Mindful Colouring, eating and listening
Week 4
Massage - Hand or peer massage
Week 5
Music- Calming music, sing an upbeat song, enjoy and move your body to the music
Week 6
Gratitude - What are you grateful for? Focus on family, school, friends, food, a home etc
Week 7
Yoga - Relaxation, stretches, moves and breathing
At Christ Church School we have 4 pupils who take part in the Health Champions programme. They attend meetings each term with other Health Champions across Oldham. The Health Champions then deliver assemblies and key messages to all staff and children. They will teach very important lessons to the children in their classrooms about how to keep healthy and changes that we can make.
Please see some links below which you may find useful:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/sleep-and-tiredness/healthy-sleep-tips-for-children/
https://www.thechildrenssleepcharity.org.uk/
https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/schools-and-youth-groups/
https://www.togmind.org/youth-in-mind/take-5
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