Well Being week Celebrated in January

Here are some photos from our well-being week which we celebrated in January.

Well Being Week

Nun’s Cross recently celebrated our annual Well-Being Week. This is a very special week in our annual calendar where we focus on a variety of areas that help our overall wellbeing. From mindfulness to looking after our bodies, helping in our community, and reducing our time on screens we had activities across the school to cover it all.

This year, the children also got a chance to explore some hidden talents, and skills or discover new hobbies through a genius hour we organised. Each teacher organised a club that explored a new interest the children may not have considered exploring, taught a new skill, or allowed a space for the children’s talents to be encouraged. The children had an opportunity to take part in two clubs out of a wide variety of choices from fashion design to dance, marbles, cooperative games, drama, jewellery making, minibeast adventures, and more. It was a great week and was enjoyed by the whole school community!

Well-Being Week

All the children recently enjoyed a week of focusing on their Well-Being in Nun’s Cross! Each class found creative ways to try and explore the various different areas of well being.

We thought about the things that we are grateful for. Some things that we are grateful for might be big things, but we also talked a lot about the little things that we are very grateful for too! Senior infants gathered their thoughts and made gratitude chains as a visual representation of all they are grateful for.

Each classroom designed a well-being themed door to their classroom with the children taking the lead in the design and creativity.

Each class found ways to demonstrate how important it is to cooperate with others. A wide range of cooperative games and activities happened throughout the school and we all learned that things can be much easier, and always more fun, when we work together!

Helping our community is helpful to our own individual well being too! We extended our efforts to our community to help by doing a litter pick from our school to the village! We collected lots of rubbish and we disposed of it properly, helping to keep our local environment clean. We also took some time to think about the people in our community who might be a little lonely this January and we made Happy New Year cards to send to them.

We learned about healthy eating and how important it is to ensure that we are eating a healthy and balanced diet. We had some fruit tasting sessions in school during the week to help encourage us all to try new things!

We hope that all the children picked up some well being ideas that they can practice for the rest of the year!

Well-Being Week

This week at Nun’s Cross our Well-being committee have been highlighting the importance of our well-being through a variety of different activities and events. Our well-being is very important to us and this week we have tried to focus on the 5 different areas that are important to support in order to have good well-being and mental health.

CONNECT

Ms Pearse very kindly spent time this week with each class to focus on a variety of stories and breathing activities. She used a variety of stories, tasks and exercises to help give the children the skills they need to develop the self confidence and awareness to deal with some tricky feelings and/or situations they might come across!

We have also spent some time this week clearing our minds and allowing ourselves to relax and be calm. We have completed lots of mindful colouring and have been listening to some relaxing music which has even made some of us sleepy!

BE ACTIVE

We are a very active school and we know how important this is for positive well-being! This week Ms Doyle very kindly took each class for a dance lesson in Bokwa! We absolutely loved it and hope she will teach us some more moves soon!

We held a school disco and all the children got to show us their moves on the dancefloor! It was so much fun and we have had many requests from children to have a disco every week - and why not?

TAKE NOTICE

Taking notice is a very important part of having healthy well-being, but its one that can sometimes be the easiest to neglect because we are busy. This week we made an extra effort to slow down and think about things we dont always have time to reflect on. We took the time to think about the things that make us happy, things we are grateful for and things that we are looking forward to in the future. We had great discussions with each other and realised just how lucky we are! We represented our thoughts in posters, gratitude jars and chains, and happiness posters.

KEEP LEARNING

We were so lucky to have Felisity Cullen-Molloy, from Greystones and Arklow Karate Kid, volunteer her time to come and teach our whole school some self defence this week. Felisity demonstrated some cool defence moves for us and we also got to practice them ourselves. It is an important skill for everyone to have some knowledge of and, as it was a new experience for most of our children, it allowed us to learn something new too! We are grateful to her and her team for their time - the children really enjoyed it!

GIVE

We held an Amber Day, where all the children were invited to dress in amber colours, and we raised money for Pieta house, a very worthwhile charity which works to support mental health. 4th class delivered a wonderful assembly to a sea of amber, reminding us that God wants us all to be a bright light and if you feel that your lamp is running low on oil, you can always turn to him for help.

We held a collection for Pieta house and we would like to thank you all for your incredible donations to end our well-being week. We were blown away by the generous support and kindness shown. Luke, one of our 5th class students, took it upon himself to bake cookies and sell them to his class mates. The efforts of Luke, and indeed his classmates for supporting his efforts, raised a huge €90 alone! Together with the donations brought in throughout the school, we have raised an enormous €491 for Pieta House this year!

Our Easter Egg Hunt

Following our Easter Assembly today, our classes enjoyed an Easter Egg Hunt. The Easter Bunny noticed all the great work going on in school and paid a visit with some Easter eggs for the children to enjoy. They were absolutely everywhere but with our crew of searchers it didn’t take long before we had the place cleared out. We would like to say a huge thanks to our Parents Association who worked very hard in helping to make today possible. We would like to wish our entire school community a happy and safe Easter break.

Postcards with Love

Today 5th and 6th class posted their postcards to the residents of a care home in Greystones which they were paired with through An Post. We hope these postcards can brighten the lives of the residents this Christmas.

Kindness Day

Nun’s Cross is filled with even more kindness than usual today as we celebrate Kindness Day. Each class has put in extra effort to be kind, to think of ways to be kind and to celebrate kindness as we believe that kindness makes the world a better place! In all of our classrooms you can see so much kindness happening from the actions of the kids and teachers to the creative displays on the walls and everywhere in between!

Amber Flag Has Arrived!

We have been patiently waiting and our flag has finally arrived! We are delighted and cant wait to see it flying high outside our school!

Positivity and Well-Being in 4th Class

All of the children in 4th class have been working really hard on their positivity. They have been developing their growth mindset in a positive way and are trying their best to always see the glass as half full, rather than half empty! No matter what you think you can’t do, if you put your mind to it, you might be surprised to realise that YOU CAN!

4th class are also trying to follow six very simple words!

KIND HANDS, KIND FEET, KIND WORDS!

If we can all follow these simple words, we believe, the world will be a nicer place!

Well-Being

In 3rd class, we have been working through the Weaving Wellbeing programme and we have spent extra time outdoors this month. We have engaged in a variety of activities which promote good mental health and wellbeing. These include mindfulness colouring, daily affirmations, breathing exercises and meditation. Each child has their own 'wellbeing toolkit' of simple strategies and tools that they can use to help regulate their feelings. We will continue to build on these as the year progresses. We also have a feelings check-in board where the children can identify how they are feeling at different times of the day and we have re-introduced our worry box as a way for the children to express any worries they may have.

100 Days Of School

Today we celebrated the 100th day of the school year with a variety of activities in each class.

In assembly this morning all the children who have been present for all 100 days were presented with a certificate and a special sticker to celebrate their achievement.

Nun's Cross Hits The Headlines!

Nun’s Cross made this weeks edition of The Wicklow People newspaper with coverage of our recent well being week activities. At the time of going to print our fundraiser had raised €300, however following some late donations we have now raised €356. Many thanks to all who supported our well being week.

Well being week in 5th and 6th

Last week was well being week in our school and we really enjoyed taking some time out from our busy lives to concentrate on being well. We enjoyed a wonderful talk on nutrition, pilates and we also took the week off homework. Our amber flag committee also challenged us to make some well being posters which can be seen below.

We also had great fun making a wall display to remind us to always be mindful.

Amber Day

Nun’s Cross turned Amber today as we celebrated the end of our Well-Being week. We held a fundraising day for Pieta House and for resources for our sensory room. Many thanks to all the children and parents for supporting this day, we raised a very impressive €356!

Worry Boxes

Each class has had a worry box introduce to their classroom. This is an idea brought forward, and made, by the Well Being committee as a way for children who have something on their minds but are unable to express it. The children can now, in confidence, put anything that is on their mind into the box which will be monitored by the teachers.

Well Being Committee

We are delighted to have set up our schools first Well Being Committee which is made up of a group of very enthusiastic students from 2nd-6th class. We are looking forward to how we can improve and develop the well being of our school community.

Yoga in Nun's Cross

Allyson Dowling kindly came in a do 3 yoga sessions with the younger classes. Each class got their own session, which they fully enjoyed and were nice and relaxed afterwards!

Well-Being Week

All next week there will be a big focus on all things well-being in Nuns Cross and we celebrate our first well-being week. Each class will focus a little extra time on activities such as mindfulness colouring, DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read), extra classes outside (weather permitting), breathing and relaxation activities and more. 

We are also thrilled to have some visiting experts to help us this week. Allyson Dowling has kindly offered to come in a do 3 yoga sessions with the younger classes, Claire Andrews, who runs Wicklow Yoga (www.wicklowyoga.com) is kindly giving her time to do yoga with 3rd and 4th class and Nina Scott, who runs Nina Scott Pilates (www.ninascottpilates.com) has made space in her busy diary to come and do some pilates with 5th and 6th class. We really appreciate the time these 3 mums are giving to come and do these classes with the children. The effect that good nutrition has on our well-being is something that is well known and we are delighted to have another one of our fantastic mums, Maija Tweeddale, who is a nutritional therapist, coming in to spend two days teaching the children all about good nutrition.  

We will be ending the week with a fundraiser by holding an Amber Day. We hope to see as much amber/orange around the school as possible and this will be to raise funds, and awareness, for two causes. The first is for Pieta House, a fantastic charity who help so many people who are in their darkest place. To find out more about their services please go to https://www.pieta.ie/about.  Some of the money raised will also go towards developing our sensory room. Our sensory room came up as the number 1 resource the children feel that Nun's Cross has to help, and to care for, their mental health and well being in our school. It also came up as the number one thing the children would like to see improved in our school so we will be trying to invest in it as much as we can this year. The sensory room is a small space, but a very valuable space to any child in our school who just needs a safe space for a while, some where to decompress, let off some steam or to just be calm. We hope that this fundraiser will be something you will support generously.  

Finally, all children will receive well-being focused homework this week in place of the normal writing, tables, spellings etc. This homework is based on the wheel of well-being which highlights 6 different areas we should focus on in order to have good mental health and well-being. We are all good at looking after some areas but not as good at looking after others so this is designed so the children will have choice over what area they would like to work on each day. If there is something outside of the suggestions that your child would rather focus on for their personal well-being then, of course, that is fine. No documentation needs to be done each evening however your child may be asked, over the course of the week, to feed back on activities they have engaged in for homework. 

Well being homework for Junior Infants - 2nd class

Well-being homework for 3rd-6th class