Student Wellbeing

There are a range of activities that will help build and maintain your child’s wellbeing. Most of them are short and require very few materials. The activities cover six key elements that are important to wellbeing. There are also activities that focus on positive thinking and gratitude as well as breathing exercises that promote calm.  

The six elements include;

• Understanding Emotions: Understanding emotions helps your child to understand themselves and other people. 
• Personal Strengths: Help to build your child’s ability to recognise and understand positive qualities in themselves and others.
• Positive Coping Provide opportunities for your child to discuss and learn different types of coping strategies. 
• Problem Solving: Your child can develop their critical and creative thinking skills to explore different types of problems.
• Stress Management Learn about different calming strategies to deal with stress.
• Help Seeking: In these challenging times, it is important to normalise asking for help.
• https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/parents/family-health/parents-wellbeing-activities-primary.pdf

Additional activities to try at home;

Goal: Practice Positive thinking. Activity: Each day for the next week, spend 10-15 minutes with your child getting them to think about three things that went well during the day. Get them to write down the three things and then write down what they did that made them happen. These can be simple things like someone laughed a joke or more major events. This can become a weekly journal for your child.

Goal: Practice gratitude. Activity: Encourage your child to create a family gratitude tree or wall. Collect colourful pieces of paper, ribbons and string. Cut the paper into postcard size pieces. On each piece of paper, write down something to be grateful about. Tie them to the tree in your yard, a sturdy house plant or stick them up on a wall in the family room/kitchen. 

Goal: Calm the mind and body. Activity: With your child, sit in a comfortable position. Ask your child to close their eyes, breathe deeply and relax. Ask your child to breathe out completely, then block their right nostril with their right thumb and breath in deeply through the left nostril, then breathe out deeply through the left nostril. Repeat for one to three