Assistant Principals Report

Resilience Project – Gratitude

We have been delighted to introduce The Resilience Project to Glen Waverley Primary School this year. Already we have seen teachers and students engaging in lessons to build their understanding of how we can become more resilient through practicing the principles of Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness. Today, I would like to take a deeper dive into Gratitude and how we can demonstrate this principle outside of the classroom. 

Working on gratitude helps us to be thankful and appreciate what we have in our lives, rather than focusing on what we don’t have or what we want. When we practise being grateful, we start to scan the world to look for positives – this only takes 21 days! Practising gratitude every day increases our levels of energy, and helps us to feel happier and more focused, determined and optimistic. It even helps us have better sleep, lowers levels of anxiety and depression and we are less likely to get sick. So many benefits – let’s all try to be grateful for the things and people in our lives every day!

One way of exploring this as a family is to create and participate in a whole family Gratitude Scavenger Hunt. As a family create a scavenger hunt list of things that make you happy or you are grateful for, you can make your own list or use the examples below:

• Something that makes you happy
• Something you love to smell
• Something you enjoy looking at
• Something that is your favourite colour
• Something you like in nature
• Something that is useful for you

Each member of the family can use this list and find as many things as they can. You can hunt for things inside or outside, or both. You can hunt for real things, or you can also do this using magazines or pictures from the internet.

After a set amount of time hunting, come back together, have a look at what each person collected and let them explain why they are grateful for each item.

Another activity you could do as a family is the Habit Builder. Every night at dinner, have each person talk about their favourite thing about that day.

Here are some photos of the students practising Gratitude at school.