The theme of this year's Children’s Mental Health Week is Express Yourself.

Expressing yourself is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. This could be through art, music, writing and poetry, dance and drama, photography and film, and doing activities that make you feel good.

As part of Booker Avenue Infant's approach to supporting our children we are introducing the 'ROAR' response. 

'The ROAR response to mental health in primary schools is a programme that aims to help teachers and staff recognise and address the signs of mental health problems in children.'

We know that talking about our feelings can be hard.  Try using the ROAR Rainbow to ask your child how they are feeling from 1 – 10.  1 means they are feeling very sad or worried, and 10 means they are feeling great.  Your child may feel somewhere in between and may move up and down the Rainbow during the day.  Try using this with your child – you could tell them how you’re feeling first to start the conversation.

Please also meet Ralph. 

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwRk9K-yj_0

As you can see, he’s a pretty resilient elephant that can bounce back from set backs he faces and find a new way to deal with his problems.  He wasn’t always that way, though.  He needed help from the Resili-ANTS: Learning Leo, Coping Cody, Core Self Courtney, Basics Bob and Belonging Billy and Bella.

Please see below for some more information and activities.