Today was our special ‘ Dress to Express’ Worship to celebrate Children’s Mental Health Week. The theme of Dress to Express this year is ‘Know Yourself and Grow Yourself’.
Children's emotional well-being is just as important as their physical health. Good mental health helps them develop the resilience to cope with whatever life throws at them and grow into well-rounded, healthy adults
Our Heads and Deputies led the worship this week and started by telling everyone how they express themselves and they asked us all how we express ourself best. We heard that some children express themselves through playing football or other sports, dancing, listening to music and art etc. Mrs Ham showed us photos of how she likes to support her mental health through walking up huge fells with her dogs and her family.
We then watched a clip from Inside Out the movie when Riley looked at various memories. We met sadness, joy, fear, disgust and anger. The children and Mrs Ham then acted out an emotion and the rest of the children had to guess what it was. We all feel different emotions but these affect our mental health.
5 Ways to Well-being are a great way to support our mental well-being such as: being physically active, connecting with others, learning new skills, giving to others and paying attention to the present moment (mindfulness).
A question that the children presented asked ‘ How well do we really know ourselves?’
The children really enjoyed watching the clips and guessing the emotions that the characters were showing. The children shared when they too had experienced the emotions and how it made them feel.
In another clip, we learnt about a boy named Malaki who felt like he was bad at everything he tried. Malaki was encouraged to ‘level up’ by his friends and people around him who cared for him. He was challenged to try a new skill which included skiing and ballet and tried his best with both. Although he wasn’t great at ballet he was awarded recognition for his determination and resilience.
The children were asked what they had learnt from the video and the responses were: to keep going even if you aren’t the best, to not fall at the first hurdle and you can do anything that you set your mind to.
We are all unique and special and God gave us many talents, some of yet we might not have discovered. We should let our light shine for all the world to see. We said our special Year of Prayer about our talents again and thanked God for the talents we have and the ones we are yet to discover. Our Heads and Deputies then finished with a special prayer for Children's Mental Health Week.
To end our Worship we had the pleasure in listening to Renee, Molly, Alice and Lyla who read their acrostic poems ‘ Being Me’ and we sand 'Shine from the Inside Out' with our best singing voices and actions.
What a wonderful way to start our day and a great end our Children's Mental Health Week, although we know that we need to focus on our mental health and wellbeing every day, not just this week.
