Children's Mental Health Week 2024

It will be Children’s Mental Health Week from Monday 5th to Sunday 11th February. This is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the importance of children and young people’s mental health. This year's theme is 'My Voice Matters'. My Voice Matters is about empowering children and young people by providing them with the tools they need to express themselves.

To support the children with this during the week the whole school will be taking part in the “My Hidden Chimp” project. The project is based on the principles from the book ‘My Hidden Chimp’ by Professor Steve Peters.

The aim of the project is to teach all the children healthy habits to help support their feelings, and emotions and to express them in a positive way.

Through assembly and activities in class they will learn about the neuroscience of the mind in a simplified way. They will be taught that our emotional brains can be labelled our ‘chimp brain’ and that it is there to keep us safe but can sometimes overreact and cause us to ‘flip our lids’.

By learning about and naming their ‘chimp brains’ it will help them to understand how to control their responses to feelings and emotions. They will also learn 10 helpful habits to train their ‘chimp’ or emotional brain.

Each Year group will focus on one of the 10 habits to practice.

Year Group	Class Focus Area
Whole School	Showing good manners
N	Learning to share
R	Smiling
1	Saying sorry
2	Being kind to someone
3	Talking about your feelings/Asking for help
4	Trying new things
5	Accepting when no really means no!
6	Doing what you have to do

We look forward to sharing more about the project and the children’s work with you after half-term and there will be follow up assemblies during Empathy Awareness Week at the end of February.

If you would like any further information about the project please contact Miss McGrath, mhfa@castlehill.rbksch.org or visit our website Mental Health and Wellbeing Page