This week has been national Children's Mental Health Awareness Week and the children at Echelford have been exploring this through assemblies, class learning and group activities. Across the week, the pupils have participated in purposeful class dialogues about what the term 'mental health' means and in what ways we are all unique.

Each child was given a strip of paper in their house colour on which they wrote something that makes them unique; the School Council then joined each strip together to create three house paper chains that are now displayed proudly in the hall. The learning throughout the week has allowed the children to have a greater understanding on what mental health is and the importance of taking care of yourself and each other.

“Mental health is about how you feel in your mind. When you have good mental health, you are happy and have a healthy mind. However, poor mental health is where you have something in your mind that is making you feel upset or down. We need to keep our minds healthy, just like we do with our bodies. In class, we discussed the importance of talking to people that you trust or writing down how you feel if you prefer. Additionally, we talked about what makes us all unique and how exciting it is that we are all different.” Amelia, Year 4