This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, so to advocate for this Nursery have been taking part in some mindful and relaxing activities to help them understand how it feels to feel calm and relaxed but more importantly how they can achieve this in times of upset, sadness or anger.
In our Mindful Monday Crew the children took part in animal yoga. They worked hard and had lots of fun recreating the modelled poses and practising yogi breathing.
During our Wise Wednesday Crew the children talked around what they noticed about the faces of some characters on a feeling thermometer as we checked in. Some children said that the characters from 3-5 on the scale looked; “Sad”, “Scared”, “Frightened”, “Worried” or were “Crying”. The children then pop corned, what they could do to cheer themselves up? Some of our ideas were fantastic, the children said “Go for a scooter ride”, “Get a hug”, “Play with toys”, “Bounce on my trampoline”, “Stroke my doggy”, “Read a book”, “Bake”, “Watch Bluey” and “Sing”.
Nursery then took part in a carousel of four different activities, each lasting 3/4 minutes which taught them strategies of what they can also do in school and at home to help them calm, relax and self regulate. These activities were;
Dancing to guided movement songs.
Completing a jigsaw.
Guided breathing patterns including; Balloon breath, Bumblebee Breath, Snake breath and Finger breathing.
And mindful colouring.
At the end of the session we all checked back in to share how the children thought the characters on the feeling thermometer would feel now, if they had taken part in the activities we had? The children said “happy and calm”, “excited” or “relaxed”. The children then suggested which was their favourite activity – lots of fun and relaxing had by all. Great, powerful work Nursery!
