The classroom calming effect helps Wigan children

The local authority has developed a “wellbeing toolkit” and training package to encourage professionals who work with nought to fives to introduce mindfulness activities into the daily routine.

It aims to create more peaceful environments for learning and to equip children with skills to calm themselves so that they will be able to learn more effectively.

Emily Wood, 0-4 outcomes improvement co-ordinator at the council, helped develop the toolkit.

She said: “Our brains develop the most between birth and the age of five so these are vital years in terms of a child’s educational and emotional development. Research shows that children’s brains can only connect to the prefrontal lobe, the learning and thinking part of the brain, if they feel calm and safe.

Council assistant education director Cath Pealing added: “This toolkit is brilliant because it gives teachers and practitioners ready-made activities to help children calm themselves in easy, playful ways and the training package helps make sure that staff feel comfortable and confident about delivering the activities.”

Sacred Heart RC Primary in Beech Hill is one of the first schools to embrace the programme.

Early years lead teacher Katrina Beardsworth said: “We found that the first lockdown had impacted on everyone’s mental health, so this arrived at just the right time. All of our staff took the training first, as we thought that the staff would need to be feeling emotionally well to be able to pass on positivity and calm to the children, and we all benefitted from it.

“Each class now does some of the exercises every day and we’ve seen such a change in school. Lots of the children now have much more positive wellbeing and this has definitely impacted on the success of the curriculum as the children are much more ready to learn.”