So, another busy week at St Peter’s. With matches galore and our first rehearsal at Blundell’s for the Big Sing event taking place next week, the children also took part in activities around Safer Internet Day and Children’s Mental Health Week.
Safer Internet Day is celebrated globally in February each year to promote the safe and positive use of digital technology for children and young people, and to inspire a national conversation about using technology responsibly, respectfully, critically, and creatively. Safer Internet Day 2022 was celebrated with the theme ‘All fun and games? Exploring respect and relationships online’. Year 5 became very involved in their drama lessons, performing a scripted piece on sharing photos online without consent. They then had to create resolutions to situations where friendships had been tested due to fallouts online. The resolutions they created were mature and beautifully presented.
The theme of this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week was ’Growing Together’. Growing Together is about growing emotionally and finding ways to help each other grow. Challenges and setbacks can help us to grow and adapt and trying new things can help us to move beyond our comfort zone into a new realm of possibility and potential. However, emotional growth is often a gradual process that happens over time, and sometimes we might feel a bit ‘stuck’. Due to the pandemic, the School has seen a significant rise in children’s anxiety and we have had a real push this week on reassuring children that it’s ‘okay not to be okay’ and that we are all here to listen. We’ve really focused on developing children’s resilience and have talked a lot about the emotions they feel.
It was lovely to see children in Reception looking at their feelings. They spoke about how we can describe the way that they feel, using words like happy, sad, excited, scared, proud, nervous, and joyful. They used their news writing session to talk and write about what makes them happy. They also used the opportunity to discuss who we can talk to if we are feeling a certain way. Amazing for four and five year olds! Year 2 focused on how being kind to others, not only makes other people feel good, but can make you feel good too. They completed a daily act of kindness tracker, created scenarios showing acts of kindness in Drama and wrote poems about what kindness looks like. A wonderful week all around and we are so proud of our children with how engaged they have been in discussing such topics.
Claire Wellington-Smith
Assistant Head, Pastoral Care & Safeguarding
