Gilgai Plains Primary School

Wellbeing

The Resilience Project

At Gilgai Plains our Social and Emotional Learning program is supported by The Resilience Project. The Resilience Project is committed to teaching positive mental health strategies to prevent mental ill-health and build young people’s capacity to deal with adversity.

Our teachers and students engage in weekly lessons and activities around the key principles of Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness (GEM), and Emotional Literacy to build resilience.

 

This newsletter we wanted to give families the opportunity to explore one of these principles, Gratitude at home.

Gratitude

 

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!

 

 

Whole Family Activity: 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 uses the list and has to 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.

Family Habit Builder:

Every night at dinner, have each person talk about their favourite thing about that day.