Activities for Children's Mental Health Week
The Wellbeing Wheel: 5-a-day for Mental Health
Alongside the SCARF values (safety, caring, achievement, resilience and friendship), runs the 5 Ways to Wellbeing approach. This framework is designed to help us all to include wellbeing activities into our daily lives; it's 5-a-day for mental wellbeing! To find out more go to NHS - 5 steps to mental wellbeing.
To look after our mental wellbeing we need to try look after these five different things, every day. These help us to stay happy and healthy. We call this the wellbeing wheel.
Here are the five parts of the wellbeing wheel...
- Be Active
- Get Creative
- Mindful Moments
- Connect with Others
- Give to Others
Wellbeing activities for you to try at home
Be Active
For Be Active -try this activity, called Let's Get Moving. You can do the exercises to music - or even just sing along as you do them! Singing is a type of exercise, too! It makes our lungs stronger. Click on the picture below to see the exercises. If you can print the page that would be great! Don't worry if you can't - you can just look at it on the screen and give each exercise a mark.
Get Creative
For Get Creative you could do some drawing, or maybe some puzzles. Oh! And there's the SCARF letter poster. You can colour that in or write some ideas inside the letter. You could even make up a song or dance about what SCARF means to you.
You could even get creative with food. Maybe you could do some baking or you could try to make some fruity faces? These are a fun and fabulous way to get your 5-a-day!
Click on the picture below to see the instructions for these fab fruity faces!
Mindful Moments
For Mindful Moments you could try some calming breathing activities. Here's a way of doing this.
For this easy breathing exercise, all you need is a 'calm palm'!
Trace around one hand with a finger from the other hand, breathing in every time your tracing finger goes upwards towards your fingertip, and breath out every time it goes downwards towards your palm.
It's not as complicated as it sounds, just follow the picture of the palm, above. Remember to go slowly around each finger. It's not a race!
You could do some colouring? There's a picture of a Wellbeing Wheel for you to print and colour
Connect with Others
Connecting - We can’t see all of our family and friends at the moment. Maybe you could ask an adult to help you to connect safely online with them. You could tell them all about the things that you’re doing this week.
Here’s a thinking puzzle that you could do with a grandparent or maybe another family member who doesn’t live with you.
If you click on this picture below and make it bigger, you'll see what you need to do. It's all about finding out things that we have in common - that's things we agree about - with other people. If you can print the picture then you can write on it, but if you can't you can copy the ideas onto some paper!
Give to Others
For Give to others, maybe you could help by doing some tidying up today? You could share your calming breathing activity (from earlier on this page) with someone else so that they can have some calm time, too. Maybe you could offer to give a helping hand in the kitchen? Remember - always ask a grown-up at home before you start any cooking, so that they can help you be safe. You could make something for the people in your house - there’s a recipe below - or you might be able to help with cooking dinner, or tidy things away afterwards. There are always lots of jobs to do in the kitchen and it would be very kind of you to offer to help. Here’s a recipe that you might like to try.
You can be creative with that milkshake recipe, too. Just swap anything that you don't have with something else
There's so much to remember! It might help to make a Daily Routine Chart! Here's one for you to print - or just copy onto some paper if you can't print it. Or you could get creative and design your own!
