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