Pastoral Wellbeing
Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS) - Carly Bannan
On Friday I will be meeting with other Mental Health and Wellbeing Leaders (MHWL) from schools across Victoria for my first Learning Community session. I look forward to networking with other teachers in this role and bringing some fresh ideas back to St Mary's to share with our community. As always, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments regarding potential wellbeing program opportunities for our students at St Mary's, or would like to know more please contact me via the school.
The Resilience Project (TRP)
We have continued to tap into our Mindfulness component of GEM (Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness) during TRP lessons these past few weeks. Junior students have actively participated in Belly Breathing as a mindful strategy and a link to the video we have watched in class to rehearse Belly Breathing (and sing a catchy song!) can be located here: https://youtu.be/_mZbzDOpylA?feature=shared
Senior students have been spending time going for mindfulness walks around the school yard and noticing things they can hear, touch, taste, smell and see. Mindful colouring has been a very popular request too and is certainly something students can be encouraged to participate in at home if they feel they need some calm-down time. There are plenty of mindful colouring pages which can be printed online and mindful colouring is a fabulous chill-out task the whole family can engage in. Challenge your child to remain focused on the task, in particular, thinking about the feel of the pencils, the noise they may make on the paper, the detail of the picture, and how hard or soft they press onto the paper to achieve different shades of the same colour. Please find attached a link to a number of pages your child may like to print out and colour to practise mindfulness at home:
Our GEM chat for this week, focusing on Mindfulness is Box Breathing. Encourage your child to give this a go when they are feeling overwhelmed or stressed.
Child Safety
St Mary's Primary School is committed to the safety and welfare of all children, within a secure environment. All children have the right to be treated with respect and to be protected from abuse and harm. Over the coming weeks, Stephen, Cath and I will be undertaking our 12-monthly refresher training as Child Safeguarding Officers. We are currently in the process of updating our Child Safety posters, so you will see updated copies around the school in classrooms and in the office. We encourage families to speak with their children about Child Safety, and as a staff, we will ensure students are familiar with the location of the posters within the school and how to keep themselves and others safe at school.
Attendance
