Our recent Living and Learning focus has been all about mental health. Teaching about mental health and emotional wellbeing is now statutory as part of Health Education.
In Year 2, our learning has included:
- we all have feelings
- solving friendship problems
- managing difficult emotions
Emotions are feelings. They can change all the time. We all experience a whole range of emotions, from anger to happiness to fear. We even managed to create an A-Z of emotions.
Feelings can be shown on people’s faces and bodies. For example:
• Can you show a happy face?
• What does an angry face look like?
• How do we look when we are excited?
• Can you show a happy body?
• What does an angry body look like?
• How does our body look when we are excited?
We discussed which feelings these characters might be experiencing and whether they might need help with their feelings.
Next, we thought about a story about friends using a ball of string as the friendship chain.
The friendship chain is passed between friends to show how the friendship could have started. One day, there might be an argument between the friends (the string would get tangled). The argument got worse and the friends fell out (the string was cut between the friends). The friends decided to try and make the friendship again (tie a knot in the string).
This was a very visual way of looking at friendships. The children thought about what sort of things can cause friendships to break and what can make friendships stronger.
Self care techniques can also help us to look after our own mental health.
Here’s a reminder of the wellbeing bingo we looked at in Year 1. These are all great ways to support our mental health and hopefully some of these can be ticked off during half term.
Finally, further information about mental health can be found on the Public Health England (PHE) ‘Every Mind Matters’ website providing NHS-endorsed tips and advice to help children and young people’s mental wellbeing and equip parents and carers with knowledge to support them.