A few times each year, Greenfield pupils set aside their usual lessons and take part in an Enrichment Day involving activities, workshops and lessons surrounding a central theme. This term the theme is wellbeing and pupils spent the day focusing on skills such as resilience, perseverance, confidence, collaboration and empathy.

Children in Owls, Robins and Reception each had the opportunity to visit the Wetlands Centre in Horsell, where they soaked up the winter sunshine and completed activities that required resilience. Back at school, mixed-age groups took part in art and craft activities to encourage confidence and collaboration, a challenging obstacle course to promote team-building, perseverance and collaboration and exploration of empathy themed poems.

All pupils, from Owls and Robins through to Year 6, had meditation session with a qualified instructor from Relax Kids; a welcome opportunity to pause and reflect during what was otherwise a very busy day!

Children in Years 1 to 6 circulated around the school in small groups, participating in various activities designed to focus on one of the five wellbeing skills.

Collaboration

In their groups, the children were faced with a challenge and a number of obstacles. They had to complete the obstacle course as a group, leaving no boy or girl behind!

Perseverance

The perseverance challenge sent squeals of frustration and delight through the school corridors all day! Using just four pieces of guttering, the group had to transport a tennis ball from the Year 3 classroom at one end of the building, down a flight of stairs and all the way to Mrs Botting’s office at the other end of the building. Easier said than done and only a couple of groups managed to get all the way to the final destination. Despite this, all groups showed great perseverance and teamwork. Other perseverance challenges included keepie-uppies and building a house of cards.

Empathy

“Hello, you’ve reached the empathy hotline”. In this activity children had to put together their own empathy hotline, discussing what they might say to someone who needed their support.

Each group also had the opportunity to create their own ‘pet rock’. They had to consider how they would care for their new pet and think carefully about its needs.

Confidence

The confidence groups had lots of physical challenges to overcome. A tight-rope, pogo stick and other wibbly-wobbly tasks that required a little bit of gumption and a lot of encouragement from others in order to succeed.

Resilience

Building resilience is often a case of mind over matter and each group took part in a mindfulness and visualisation workshop, where they concentrated on taking control of their emotions and focusing on the end goal. They also played games where the chances of being 'out' were high, but if you remained resilient, another opportunity soon came your way!

To see photographs from the day please visit our Facebook page.