This week has been Children’s Mental Health Week, based on the theme of ‘Growing Together’, which focuses on growing emotionally and finding ways to help each other grow. As a school, we have been completing activities around this theme, and Mr Baker launched the initiative with an assembly on Monday. During the week, all of the children have made a flower labelled with a different emotion that we will ‘plant’ outside the front of the school, as we do with the remembrance poppies. Classes 3 and 4 have also been recording instances of being resilient, and Classes 1 and 2 learnt to recognise a range of emotions.

The week is very timely in terms of addressing the challenges our children have faced recently. They have all been incredibly adaptable during our recent COVID outbreak and the reintroduction of bubbles. Challenges and setbacks can certainly help children to grow but we are recognising their resilience by finishing the term with a fun day, sharing what we have learnt throughout the week. The children are invited to wear something on the theme of growing. It could be a flowery outfit, a single flower or leaf or even brown or green clothes.

If you would like to take part in some of the Mental Health activities at home, the following website has many free resources for families:

Parents and Carers - Children's Mental Health Week (childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk)

From coverage in the press, you are probably aware that Safer Internet Day takes place in early February. This is observed throughout the world as a means of celebrating the advantages of the internet alongside its dangers and potential risks to children.

The theme for this year is 'All fun and games? Exploring Respect and Relationships on line.' As a school, in conjunction with Children's Mental Health Week, we are completing some activities around internet safety.

As part of my assembly, we watched a video on the theme of gaming and online communication, and how to respond and interact appropriately. The link for this is as follows:

https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2022/virtual-assemblies

This website also has a very good section for parents with advice, guides and resources for keeping children safe on line. The link is as follows:

https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/parents-and-carers

We are currently updating our Online Safety Policy and will publish it on our school website shortly. In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns about internet safety, there are a few people in school who you can get in touch with. You can obviously talk to your child's teacher but, more specifically, our Online Safety and Computing Leads. Both of them can offer help and advice and can signpost you to support if you need it.