On Friday 9th October 2020, Westwood celebrated Mental Health Awareness day. It was a day to talk about our feelings and emotions and to spend a little bit of time thinking about our own mental health and how to make it better.

In Lower Key Stage 2, we put on a carousel of activities so each class spent some time with Mr Cooper and Mrs Wilson, Miss Robertshaw and Miss Kelly and Mr Hayes, Mrs Russell and Mrs Crawshaw. All of the children got the chance to meet all of the staff in our bubble so they know that if they need to talk to someone about their feelings or emotions, they can speak to any of us!

With Mr Cooper, we spent some time thinking about coping strategies when things get a little too much. We did some Just Dance which got plenty of us giggling and made us feel really good. We then calmed things down a bit and did some guided meditation, again another strategy that you can use to calm yourself down and feel better. Then we thought about Captain Tom Moore and read his book. We discussed how this book links in with our school motto of 'If you believe you can do it you can and you will' and 'Dream, believe, achieve'.

In Miss Robertshaw's class, the children looked at the story 'The Boy, the mole, the fox and the horse' and created some amazing inspirational quotes and pictures to mirror what was happening in the story.

And with Mr Hayes, the children thought about their happy place. They closed their eyes to imagine being at that happy place and then they had lots of materials they could use to represent their happy place on paper. The designs looked brilliant and they will be kept in children's trays for if they feel overwhelmed or emotional in the day and they can get their pictures out and think of their happy place.

It was a great day and it was made even better by the staff dressing up as MINIONS!

#MentalHealthAwarenessDay

#HelloYellow