Children’s mental health week activities .The children in Birches class took part in activities on ways we can connect with the people in our lives.
Helping your child manage their health and wellbeing is a top priority for many, which is why so many apps exist for this. ‘Internet matters’ have found some of the best and most popular wellbeing and mindfulness apps for you and your family.
From recognising emotions to practising mediation techniques, these apps offer a range of ways to manage wellbeing:
Helping your child manage their health and wellbeing is a top priority for many, which is why so many apps exist for this. Here are some of the best and most popular wellbeing and mindfulness apps for you and your family. From recognising emotions to practising mediation techniques, these apps offer a range of ways to manage wellbeing:
Chillpanda: Suitable for age: 6-12 years (can also benefit over 12s)
Learn to relax, manage your worries and improve your wellbeing by measuring your heart rate and following tasks to suit your state of mind. It helps children and their parents and carers understand different emotions, and introduces skills to help regulate these including breathing techniques and calming games.
Cove: Suitable for age: 4+
Described as a musical journal for your mental health. Using music you can capture your feelings and emotions in sound to create a musical mood journal. Helps with anxiety, using journaling and melodies to improve mood.
Mindful Powers: 4-11 yrs
Helps primary-aged children play towards a healthier relationship with their life, emotions and anxieties. After soothing their own Flibbertigibbet – a friendly but emotional floaty pet – children can then go on an audio-led storyline, discovering mindful and calming techniques. Younger children will enjoy nurturing their pet – and parents may also quietly enjoy having a play with this very relaxing and satisfying app.
Ollee: 8-11yrs
It helps them explore feelings around school, family, friends and the world – and share advice with a parent or trusted adult.
Children can tell Ollee how they’re feeling and it will give them ideas about what to do. If they’re not sure, Ollee will help them figure it out. Together, parents and children can share Ollee’s advice and talk about feelings together through connected accounts.
Headspace: Meditation and Sleep: Suitable for age: Any age. Children’s meditations are separated into age groups 5 and under, 6 to 8, 9 to 12, 12+
Headspace is a science-backed app in mindfulness and meditation. Learn to reduce stress, build resilience and sleep more peacefully through age specific mindfulness and meditation.
Smiling mind: Suitable for age: 3+
Helps with anxiety and overall mental wellbeing. Using mindfulness and meditation to help young people and their parents and carers focus on areas such as stress, relationships, sleep, and concentration.
Focus on the Go: Suitable for all ages/children 8 and younger
A series of family-based games designed to help children practice understanding and communicating their feelings and developing skills to calm down in challenging situations. There’s a family check-up to see how the family is tracking and further resources, tips and videos aimed at building resilience. It helps develop skills in identifying emotions, solving problems and improving communication. It helps to build family resilience as a whole through gameplay.
Positive Penguins: Suitable for 7-11
The Positive Penguins app has a simple 5-minute guided meditation for children to learn to sit, relax and let go of negative thoughts as they come into their heads. Children learn strategies to understand how events or situations affect their emotions. It is designed to change thought patterns.
Clear fear: Suitable for age: 11-19. Younger users can use the app with the support of a parent, carer or teacher.
Uses mindfulness, relaxation and breathing techniques to help young people learn ways to reduce their physical responses to threat.
Molehill Mountain: Suitable for age: 12+
For young people with autism, it provides daily evidence based tips on how to understand and manage anxiety. Track your worries and the situations that trigger anxiety, get evidence-based daily tips to understand more about anxiety, and feel more confident to self-manage your anxiety.
Think Ninja: Suitable for ages 10+ yrs
Educates young people about mental health, emotional wellbeing and provides skills young people can use to build resilience and stay well. It covers issues including stress, anxiety, low mood, or having unhelpful thoughts. The user is coached by the WiseNinja, powered by artificial intelligence and the skills of a clinical psychologist.
It also contains specific Covid-19 related content including fears relating to the virus, isolation worries and how to connect with your family and friends, worries about yours or your families health, and coping techniques that can be used.
Plant Nanny: Suitable for 9+
The app gives children a fun little nudge to help them get into the habit of drinking water regularly throughout the day by combining it with the process of growing a virtual plant.
You can pick from a selection of virtual plants and enter basic information like your child’s weight and how much water they should be consuming.
When you’ve set this up, your child will be prompted to water the plant throughout the day in order to keep it alive, and they’ll have to drink water at the same time. Once the plant has fully grown, it can be planted in a digital garden and can generate new seeds to start the whole process over again. It help them stay hydrated throughout the day and encourages healthy habits that can become second-nature and a regular part of their daily lives
The theme of the 2022 Mental Health Awareness Week is ‘Loneliness’. Loneliness is affecting more and more of us in the UK and has had a huge impact on our physical and mental health during the pandemic. Our connection to other people and our community is fundamental to protecting our mental health, and we need to find better ways of tackling widespread feelings of loneliness – and we can all play a part in this.
Reducing loneliness is a major step towards creating a mentally healthy society, so the theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is aimed at raising awareness of the impact of loneliness on our mental wellbeing and the practical steps we can take to address it.
A website for parents sharing practical tips to support children’s wellbeing and manage behaviour.
https://parentingsmart.place2be.org.uk/
Parenting Smart is a hub of short, useful articles written by Place2Be’s parenting experts. Each article, aimed at parents of children aged 5 to 11, shares practical advice on a number of different topics.
These topics include:
- Difficulties at mealtimes
- Sibling rivalry
- Peer pressure
- Safe social media use
- Co-parenting following a separation or divorce
- Arguments and conflicts
