Wellbeing
Wellbeing 2023
It was another busy year for our Wellbeing Team, with several new initiatives happening to support Wellbeing at Pilgrim School.
Our Foundation to Year 2 students undertook a range of Kimochis lessons to support their emotional literacy.
The Year 3/4 classes worked through a new resource called Everyday Resilience, with Australian author Michelle Mitchell. Michelle encouraged students with practical strategies for managing friendships.
During Terms 3 and 4 our Foundation students began the 16 week social skills foundation course, What’s the Buzz? For Early Learners. Meanwhile, our Year 6 students completed a series on Becoming Women and Blueprint to Becoming a Man, which covered topics such as mental health, healthy relations, identity and self-esteem, encouraging them to become all God has created them to be.
As part of our ongoing support of student wellbeing, several our Junior Primary students took part in weekly social skills sessions. These groups had a focus on joining in, competition, sharing, conflict resolution and honesty. Other students were supported individually for a range of wellbeing issues.
Our Wellbeing Day gave an opportunity to explore our school value of Belong. We were privileged to have Joseph Burgess, aka Jobe the Beat Boxer, deliver fun and energetic Beat Boxing sessions to all students!
This year we also engaged in The Fathering Project for the first time. This has a wealth of resources specifically aimed at encouraging fathers and father-figures to be involved in the lives and learning of their children. Through newsletter articles, resources on the portal, and fabulously fun Father and Children events (think pizza, sausages, paper planes, BBQ and board games!). This has been a fantastic way to foster and strengthen the fathering role. To access the Dad's Portal, please use the QR code below.
Finally, our very exciting addition to our Wellbeing Program announced in 2023 is our Wellbeing Dog, Lola! Through the Dogs Connect program, we will be focussing on broad scale connectedness and wellbeing across the entire school community. We look forward to welcoming Lola to our Wellbeing Team officially in 2024!
BBQ and Games Night
Friday the 24th November saw our second Fathering Project Dad and Kids nights. Pilgrim hosted a board games and BBQ event that saw over 80 father/father figures with their kids playing a variety of games and eating some delicious food from a local butcher. Intense games of chess, Catan, battleships and twister were witnessed. One particular game drew a crowd seeing a Dads vs kids game of bounce off, where balls were thrown into a catcher to create specific patterns. The atmosphere was very positive and much fun was had. We are all looking forward to more of these events in 2024.
Kind regards,
Andrew Edmondson, Jenni Forder and Brett Middleton
Wellbeing Team
