As part of Children’s Mental Health Week we’ve been encouraging the students to express themselves in many different ways… and that’s just in the PE department!

We obviously advocate a strong emphasis on supporting healthy minds through being active and having a healthy body. The Junior School PE department has been setting active challenges for the students and staff. Recently, the students from Reception to LIII rose to a walking challenge and for every kilometre covered the staff all had to do a star jump – it got to 781kilometres, and therefore, star jumps too!! Video evidence was provided to the students!

This week is our 100 Challenge, inspiring the students to do 100 of any activity each day – plenty of room for creativity and expressing themselves, with anything from ball skills to ballet pirouettes! What might you choose to do?

Reception and Lower Prep are enjoying live Active Wellbeing lessons, alongside dance, yoga, games and gym, but the staff are also impressing the importance of being active away from screens – you can’t beat some fresh (damp!) air and a family outdoor activity for giving everyone a mental boost. We all need some light relief at the moment to help us to maintain our resilience in these testing times, so maybe this weekend we should all be challenging ourselves physically, and expressing ourselves with art, photography, music, writing, jewellery making…what else can you think of?

• Mrs Orr and the PE Department