Children’s Mental Health Week 2023

Students have been exploring the wide range of emotions we may feel through various sources such as books, poetry, and class discussions. Within our year groups we have explored two emotions in further depth and will be creating our own poems to use as part of a whole school display. We look forward to continuing these discussions with the girls throughout the year.

Art

The Art room has been running daily break-time drawing sessions this week. The girls have been creating personal mandalas that interweave across a single collaborative piece of paper. Each mandala is adapted into a unique flower creating a beautiful, busy and varied flower garden. It’s a respectful process that requires patience and mindfulness.

Each year have also had the opportunity to write down their feelings about Art and what creativity means to them. Girls from Years 2 to 6 have written a single sentence or word over the week expressing their thoughts. This will be available to see later in the term, as will the ‘Flower Garden Mandalas’.

Dr Alex George talk for Year 6

Year 6 were delighted to meet Dr Alex George via a GDST zoom meeting. A few weeks ago, the girls had the opportunity to send Dr Alex some questions about his new book and get some advice on mental health issues. It was very interesting to hear his advice and answers to some poignant questions about how best we support each other and ourselves through difficult times.

Newspaper Club Report

Here at Ken Prep, we value our healthy mindsets extremely. Our motto says ‘Growing Great Minds’ after all! Every pupil at our school has half an hour of mindfulness every week and spends a lot of time colouring, reading and much more to keep our brains healthy and ready to learn. On Thursday 9 February, Year 6 joined a webinar with several other GDST schools to listen to Dr Alex who is a physician and received a UK Youth Mental Health Ambassador Award. He taught us a few tips to keep our minds fit and healthy like sleeping more, enjoying nature and listening to music. One of our favourite things that he said was “failure can lead to success”. He also wrote a book called ‘A Better Day’ which advises young people to keep positive.

– Report written by Year 6 girls