During National Children’s Mental Health Week, we launched our Wellness Week initiative, for the second year running.
This initiative provided an opportunity for students and staff to learn more about mental health, develop new skills for dealing with difficulties and work together to create a culture of openness and kindness, which can provide support to everyone. From buddy catch-ups to guest talks on happiness, there were lots of opportunities to learn new skills and take some time to relax.
Light-hearted Lunchtimes
The students showed some immense house spirit in a new addition to the house calendar, life-sized Hungry Hippos. This proved popular amongst students and staff, cheering on their houses.
Today, students had time over lunch to ‘shake it off’ at a disco in the main hall. Finding the balance between fun and academic work has been a key takeaway from this week.
Healthy mind, healthy body
Our wonderful catering team provided a Wellness Week menu, which included setting up a smoothie bar. This encouraged us to think about how our diets impact our both mental and physical wellbeing. The berry flavour was certainly the most popular!
On Wednesday, we had a visit from alumna Laura Deuster, a trained counsellor and psychotherapist, who gave an interesting talk on happiness to our Year 8 students. She also gave a lunchtime talk on keeping calm during times of pressure, which proved useful ahead of impending summer exams and university applications.
Mrs Solovyova ran a Zumba session over lunchtime to get students moving during the day on Thursday. A little bit of exercise can go a long way in improving our mind and body, particularly during the school day.
“Coinciding with Children’s Mental Health Week, we have launched a series of wellbeing initiatives across the school. This is the second year running that we have had a whole week dedicated to wellness, and it has proved successful with both staff and students. From inter-year buddy meet-ups over cookies and talks on Happiness by members of our alumnae community, to a House ‘Hungry Hippos’ competition. We’re delighted to see staff and students get involved with everything the programme has to offer.” Ms Knowles