Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

One of the lovely teachers at my son's school had done a video lesson on mental health and well being for the mental health week which was at the start of February. The activity that went with it was the scribble game. Draw a scribble and then see what objects you can see in the lines and shapes. We loved this and both had a go. I had to turn my sheet around a few times before I saw a duck and a penguin! My son found a dog, ufo, hamster, a beaver's tail and an egg timer. Why not have a go and post your picture's here, we'd love to see them.

Everyday we do a zoom call with a group of friends in the village and we do an activity together.  As it was Friday before half term and the children have all worked so hard these last six weeks and I think they are all stars. We drew a 5 star hand.  Draw around your hand. Go over the outline in felt tip. Draw a star on each finger. Write your name on the hand. On each finger write one thing you are good at.  I wrote reading, art, looking after pets, cooking and my son wrote kind on my hand, which was lovely.  This is a lovely well being activity, giving the children the chance to think about things they are good at. 

Get the children to decorate a box with stickers, photos, paper, wrapping paper, drawings of things they like. We lined the box inside with tissue paper to make it special.  Then put in the box things they can use to make themselves feel happy. Eg dvd, book, paper to write a letter/card to a loved one, colouring book, paints, soft toy, fidget spinner, game, jigsaw etc We did this activity at virtual cubs , then we showed some of our friends on zoom and made another one, I joined in too and made one for myself, everyone's well being is important. It was lots of fun.  If the children are feeling sad, unhappy or overwhelmed they can look in their well being box for comfort. 

If your child likes drawing you could get them to draw a picture of their face. We used a mirror and looked at the shape of our face and our facial features and had a go at drawing our face.  We used pencil crayons to colour in.  We also talked about things we liked about ourselves physically eg hair, eyes etc We talked about charactistics that were positive about ourselves or that we were good at or enjoyed eg happy, organised, creative etc We talked about interests and things we liked eg football, art, animals, reading etc We did this on a zoom call with some friends and gave positive suggestions about each other. We wrote the words around our face, or in a list on the back of the portrait if we didn't want to write around the drawing. It was a lovely way to highlight all the positive attributes of each other and the drawings the children produced were excellent. I somehow managed to draw the teenage version of myself!