On Wednesday 11 May, students and adults alike enjoyed an alternative timetable afternoon, both on and off-site. This was in support of Mental Health Week, where this year’s theme was ‘Loneliness’.
It was our mission to offer a wide range of activities for adults and students to enjoy together. We wanted to promote a sense of ‘togetherness’ and ‘community’, so it gave us great pleasure to see students of all ages and from different colour families come together to try new things or connect with their common interests.
A huge thank you to our fantastic staff team who offered to plan and lead such a wonderful range of activities. There were over 40 activities on offer and every student was given one of their three choices.
Activities included: contemporary dance, speed stacking, writing poetry, scavenger hunt, beach walk, making ceramic bird feeders, gardening, painting pebbles, watching films, photography, optical illusions, Just Dance, decoupage, quiz, animation workshop, handbells and boomwhackers, decorating biscuits, weights room, mindful doodling, old school children’s party, The Cube: science games, football, film making, knitting, reading, needle-felting, cooking, film making, transfer printing bookmarks, drawing nature, board games, Lego, ballet, fashion card engineering, badge making, debating, card games, puzzles and wordsearches, colouring, football, card making and anime drawing.
As a school, we have adopted the 5 Ways to Wellbeing approach and saw this in abundance across the afternoon.
CONNECT- The activities encouraged us to connect with those in our school community that we may not have had the opportunity to be with before.
BE ACTIVE- Through our engagement and participation in the activities we signed up for, we were active. Some of these activities were particularly energetic!
TAKE NOTICE– We were aware of others in our group, mindful in the activity we were doing and took time to appreciate how our chosen activity made us feel.
KEEP LEARNING – Many of us chose to try something new, others of us learnt new things about ourselves and our ability to step out of our comfort zones when working with new people.
GIVE – With our rescheduled non-school uniform day also on this day, we raised an amazing £978.46 which will be shared between the local mental health charity, Heads On, and Friends of Davison School (FODS).
