BBC Moodbooster activities welcomed
Rydal Penrhos marked charity Place2Be's Children’s Mental Health Week with a number of awareness-raising activities both inside and outside lesson time.
Rydal Penrhos places good mental health at the forefront of its entire approach to educating the children and young people in its care. Pupils flourish during their time in school when a very deliberate and thought-out support structure exists around them; one that provides them the skills and resources to battle the kinds of mental health issues that have become all too prevalent among the youngest people in our society.
On Monday 6 February pupils in the Prep participated in an enlightening morning assembly, led by their peers, which discussed the issue of loneliness. The assembly provided excellent foundational knowledge to pupils on the subject. Thankfully, being a member of a close-knit school community with small classes of twenty pupils or less can markedly reduce the risk of pupils struggling with loneliness; nonetheless, the information will prove very useful to those who might need it as they continue learning and growing.
As helpful as a presentation on the subject of mental health can be, there is also room for different kinds of prevention and sharing of information. This does not necessarily mean large-scale interventions, but rather small habitual behaviours that we can introduce into our lives and then reap real benefit. In their classes, Prep pupils learned some of these useful tactics to rebuff sadness and anxiety when they discovered 'Moodboosters'.
Available online, the Moodboosters are the product of a new project from the BBC to encourage primary aged children across the nation to embrace movement as they learn about mental health, social skills and emotional literacy. The captivating short-form Moodbooster videos include guest appearances from many familiar BBC names including Dr Ranj Singh, Amy Dowden and Oti Mabuse.
As part of each video, pupils are instructed to follow a particular activity – which might borrow concepts from fields as diverse as dance, meditation, and yoga – alongside their peers in class. Each activity has an associated idea behind it, which can range from embracing individuality to finding calm during moments of tension.
Taking part in a range of Moodbooster activities in class over the course of Children’s Mental Health Week, pupils were inspired to channel positive movement for the purposes of self-understanding and emotional control. In doing so, they supercharged their mood for the day ahead and had great fun with friends getting limbered up and jumping around.
While never replacing the need for a broader mental health support structure, Moodbooster activities can, when routinely practiced, embed healthy habits and coping mechanisms that can lead to long-term improvements in mental wellbeing. In some ways, this reflects the holistic approach the school takes to pupil flourishing at large; through a number of small purposeful educational decisions coming together over time, pupils find themselves happy and thriving in their daily life at Rydal Penrhos.
