Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week ran from 10th to 16th May 2021

Abby tells us about how staff at The Court House celebrated this week to recognise the importance of looking after their mental health

Mental health and our well-being has always been an important topic especially since the coronavirus pandemic. 1 in 4 people will be affected by mental health issues in their lifetime. Even though these statistics are related to adults, children do also suffer with their mental health and well-being. With this in mind, and the situation we have been in over the last year, we decided at The Court House to celebrate Mental Health week.

We did this by trying to guess the baby photos of every member of staff at the nursery. Can you guess the babies below to the adults?

   

We also talked about our feelings and read some books about our feelings. The books that the children decided to read were about feeling sad, scared and we also read The Smartest Giant In Town (which as you may know is all about kindness and looking after others). The staff members came up with a few inspirational and supportive quotes that will be placed in our staff room. Some of the quotes are:

“Don’t be so hard on yourself! The mum in ET had an alien living inside her house for days and didn’t know”

“Just be yourself! Nothing else matters”

“Try to focus on the step in front of you and not the whole staircase”

“If you can be anything, be kind!”

In the Dragons room (Rising pre-school) we made a little spa for the dolls and afterwards the children wanted to join in and have their own little spa. They really enjoyed this. We also did some yoga and dancing with the children. Trish read a story and said a lovely quote at the end of the yoga session. The children listened really attentively and enjoyed trying out the different yoga moves. To finish the week off the staff wrote a truth about themselves and we all had to figure out who said what. Some of the truths were:

“I’ve been on Blue Peter”

“I’ve performed on stage at the West End”

“I was a guard of honour for Prince Charles at St Paul’s Cathedral”

“I’ve been white water rafting in New Zealand”

Overall, it’s been an uplifting week and one that both the children and staff have enjoyed.