We have 12 new resources for you this week, including some more mindful Halloween fun and a join activity for mums and minis.
On Monday we celebrated World Mental Health Day, and what a day – we smashed our daily sign up record by 10am and released a brand new activity, which was downloaded by over 500 of you in just 24 hours. You can find out more about this activity at the bottom of this page.
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But we want to continue the momentum and get our techniques and activities to become a part of every day life. So this week we have brought you some new mood trackers, thought management techniques and even a glimpse into the future. Find out what fun, new mental health resources and activities we have for you below!
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My Thought Control – Imagine a world where you could pause or skip your thoughts? Now you can help children visualise stopping unhelpful thoughts with our Thought Control activity. What buttons would they like on their control? Perhaps a volume button to turn down their thoughts? – And increase those more helpful ones? They can use their control to temporarily stop their bothersome thoughts until they are more equipped to deal with them or can find someone they trust to talk to.
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The Calming Wave – The Calming Wave is a well known mindful activity that helps to calm big emotions – where you imagine a wave washing over your body from your head to your toes. We’ve adapted this slightly for children, giving them their own Calming Wave to colour in and decorate, helping them to more vividly visualise the wave as it washes over them, taking away their worries and woes.
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Positivity Potion (Adult and Kids resources) – Hocus Pocus 2 has got us in the mood for spell casting and potion planning. You can find our Positivity Potion activity for mum and mini online now! This is a feel-good activity for you to do with your little ones, prompting
discussions about what helps us think more positively and what positive thoughts are.
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My Crystal Ball – A child who struggles with their mental health may struggle to see a positive future. Help them to think about what nice things they want in their future with our Crystal Ball. The key question here is ‘what do they want?’ not ‘what do they see?’
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Pumpkin Emotions – A fun and simple emotion activity! Draw some emotion faces on our pumpkins and label the emotions below. Who can do the best scared face!? It is Halloween after all…
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Belief-O-Meter – Hypothetical worries and critical thoughts can often take hold and become hard to shake. Have your child put bothersome thoughts against our Belief-O-Meter! How true is the thought? How true do they believe the thought to be? Often just seeing a thought written down can be enough to see that it is not true. Have your child write their thoughts in our thought bubbles, then for each thought, draw an arrow on the Belief-O-Meter to show how much they really believe it.
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Halloween Mood Colouring – This colouring activity gets children thinking about what colours can reflect our moods. Ask them to choose four colours they think defines the mood they’re feeling today – if they’re feeling happy, it could be yellows and bright colours, if they’re feeling angry, it could be red or fiery oranges. Once they’ve finished, you should be able to get a sense of how they’re currently feeling.
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Weekly Mood Tracker – We love mood trackers at BHR. It’s such a simple activity to help children become more mindful of their emotions, track patterns and manage day to day feelings. This weekly tracker can be used to track a range of day to day feelings, as we know that during the day, we can go through many different emotions and moods.
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Halloween Doodling – “When you feel scared, sad or stressed, pick up a pencil and put your doodling to the test! Continue the line, swirl or draw, keep doodling until your worries are no more.”
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Inspired by the guy who covered his mansion in doodles – did you see that in the news? – it made our head hurt a little! It got us thinking about how therapeutic and mindful doodling is. Not only this, but did you know that you can get a sense of what is going through someone’s mind just by looking at their doodles? Encourage your children to get creative and put their mind to paper with these doodle sheets!
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Breathe Colouring – Our colouring sheets are incredibly popular and are one of the most simple mindful activities you can do. You can download our ‘Breathe’ colouring sheet from the Hub now.
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New for World Mental Health Day – Looking After My Mental Health – We brought you this new activity last weekend and know that so many of you downloaded this to use with your classrooms and children. This activity isn’t just for WMHD and can be used at any time to discuss ways to promote positive mental health and look after our wellbeing.
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Update on our Trauma Pack
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We know that a lot of you are waiting for our new 35 page Trauma Pack. This is currently with our clinical psychologist for review. If you’d like to know when this is ready, make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list.
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