This week across school, we have held a wellbeing week to celebrate and hold further emphasis on the children’s mental health. Our specific focus in Year 6 this week has been team building, resilience and developing our confidence with communication.

We have had plenty of opportunities to do team building challenges, like our Forest School afternoon where we went outside and did some outdoor cooking, played gutter-ball in teams, had to complete complex challenges like order yourselves in height order on benches without touching the floor and tying knots in a rope without anyone letting go of the rope at any point. A lot of these were a lot harder than they looked, but I am proud of how well the children stuck at it! The children also loved our spaghetti and marshmallow tower building challenge, where they had to create the tallest tower possible with raw spaghetti and marshmallows. Again, this was much harder than it first looked and required real perseverance and patience, as well as good team work and communication to test different ideas.

There were lots of chances for fun along the way, like our scoot at school day on Friday! The children brought in their scooters and were given two half an hour session out on the playground having some additional active break time, which they absolutely loved! The inter-house handball competition that was organised across school was another particular highlight, where the Year 6 children played handball mixed in house teams with the Year 5 children. St Cecilia, our yellow team were finally crowned as the school champions.

The children also had several mindfulness and PSHE sessions throughout the week. The completed an extended writing challenge explaining their likes and dislikes as a non-chronological report, they had an afternoon of mindfulness and expressive art and also learnt lots of breathing and coping strategies when they need to relieve stress like finger breathing and rainbow breathing.

All in all, a super week and the children not only enjoyed the activities, they developed lots of skills along the way to help them appreciate their strengths and cope with new challenges in the future!