Being My Best
What you can talk about together…
Growth Mindset
- What sort of things can you do now that you couldn’t when you were a baby?
- Was it always easy to learn to do those things?
- What did you have to do in order to make it easier? (Keep practising, not give up, try to learn from mistakes, get ideas or help from other people etc.)
- What would you like to improve at?
Yes I can!
Read or listen to the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds together - there are lots of version on YouTube. If your child has already heard the story (either at home or at school) they will most likely enjoy reading it again. It will be different with you at home, too.
Spend some time on the talking points (above) and after this give your child some pieces of paper with different dots/circles or lines on and encourage them to turn them into something else. For example, a line could become a stem of a flower, a circle could be wheel of a car.
Let your child know that there are no right or wrong ideas and if they’re not satisfied with their first attempt they can have another go.
If you have time, it would be great if you could also draw something, to show that you can try new things and that grown-ups can also keep experimenting and learning new things.
You can do it!
(You'll need a soft toy, soft ball or beanbag if doing this next activity indoors. If you have an outdoor space you can use a ball.)
Start by looking together at the picture of the Learning Line. Your child may have seen this before at school and may remember it. If so, ask your child to explain the different stages of learning. This isn't a test for your child! Just a way of encouraging them to remember the stages and show you. If the Learning Line is new - or they're struggling to remember - then work through it together.
Explain that you're both going to work on a throwing and catching challenge. Work as a team throwing your soft object to each other (you can vary the degree of difficulty according to your child's current level of skill).
Use these key questions to discuss the learning process:
- Do we always catch the object or sometimes drop it?
- Why don’t we always catch it? (Our brain and body is still learning how to do this.)
- What are the things that make it difficult? (Not having done before, the speed of the object, not reacting quickly enough etc.)
- What encouraging phrases can we say to each other - or even to ourselves - to help us keep going?
If your child isn't enjoying this game, maybe ask them if there's something else they'd like to learn or to improve at by practising.
If your child is enjoying it - or a similar challenge - you could repeat the activity for a few minutes each day and record their progress (and yours!) Remind your child not to be too concerned if they seem to get worse and point to stage 2 of the Learning Line, where things sometimes get worse before they improve! It's all part of learning and practising bouncing back.
Something new
Learn a new game together. If you have a board game that your child hasn’t played before try playing first without reading the instructions first. How did that go? What do we need to do first?
Ask your child how they feel after learning and playing it.
If you enjoyed this - or if you want to do something different, try this Resilience board game from Anna Freud Mentally Healthy Schools. If you don't have a printer for this, you could just read the cards together and ask your child to think about which answer will help a person to bounce back.
Healthy Eating
- What types of fruit and vegetables can you name?
- Which are your favourite ones?
- Why do we need to eat fruit and vegetables? (Their vitamins help us to keep healthy all over).
- Why do we need to eat a variety - that's lots of different kinds of fruit and vegetables? (Different ones do different things in the body - eating them helps us to have a balanced diet).
I can eat a rainbow!
Create a rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Make a rainbow from different coloured strips of paper, or just use coloured pencils/felt-tips. With your child, draw or paint fruits and vegetables to stick on each coloured stripe e.g. strawberries for the red stripe, peas for the green. Alternatively, find pictures of fruit and veg in magazines or from empty food packaging to stick onto your rainbow of food collage.
You can use any vegetables that you have - including tinned vegetables - to make a healthy soup and encourage children to eat the recommended 5-a-day portions of fruit and veg.