Growing Together in Children’s Mental Health Week

This theme of this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week is Growing Together and our Mental Fitness Ambassadors (MFAs) have been encouraging children (and adults) in Junior School to think about how they have grown, and how they can help others to grow.  

Every Junior School child has been asked to write a short sentence about their own growth since September.

Mrs Benson, who leads the MFA team, explained why this is important. 

She said: “We are encouraging the children to think about their growth, not only in terms of their schoolwork, but also about those times when they may have walked away from a situation when they felt angry, when they tried something new for lunch, or when they overcame their nerves to read aloud in class.”

One of the MFAs, Finley Safina, had the great idea to then join the sentences together to create a paper chain. 

He said: “Each piece of paper represents one link of a paper chain. As everyone writes their sentence, we are joining them together to make one whole school chain of growth.”

The MFAs have also visited each class this week with a gift of a lavender plant. They chose lavender because it has been used since Roman times for its calming properties that help people relax and sleep. 

Alongside the plant, the MFAs delivered a card, hand painted by themselves, that included a guided meditation on the lavender. Children and staff throughout the Junior School have been practising the meditation and enjoying the calming effect of the lavender in their classrooms. 

At the end of Children’s Mental Health Week, the lavender will be planted in the Junior School garden where it will continue to grow and thrive, and the paper chain will be hung in school for everyone to see.