Supporting Facts4Life

The Five Ways to Wellbeing –           
‘Take Notice’ Activities

1. Collect a rainbow

Creative task for a home craft project or for gentle focusing out and about.

If your child doesn’t know the colours of the rainbow, learn the mnemonic below or have fun creating your own to remember them!

Richard – Red
Of – Orange
York – Yellow
Gave – Green
Battle – Blue
In – Indigo
Vain – Violet

Set your child the task of collecting examples of these colours in use, in the home or out and about. Challenge your child to create a pattern or picture using the colour samples they have collected.

2. School Run Scavenger Hunt

Choose 5 items from the list to hunt for on the journey to or from school:

    • A leaf that is bigger than your hand
    • A snail
    • A worm
    • A magpie
    • Something shiny
    • A blue car
    • A pine cone
    • An acorn
    • A smiling child
    • A smiling adult
    • Something smooth

Vary the hunt choices with alternatives or new additions.

School Run Scavenger Hunt template download
School Run Scavenger Hunt template (with pictures) download

3. Leaf Collection

Make a collection of different leaves. Sort the collection in different ways such as size, shape, shade etc. Use the leaves to create pictures in varying ways e.g. collage, rubbings.

4. Listening activity or, the ‘Tricky Morning Calm Down’ challenge

If it’s been a challenging start to the day, try this listening activity on the way to school to help soothe high emotion.

Collect 5 different sounds.

You could choose a theme to focus listening depending on where you live and how you journey to school e.g. bird calls, animal noise, human noise, traffic noise. Try to introduce the task in a low volume, ideally a whisper as children often match the volume you use and the reduction in volume will help ready them to listen carefully.

5. Garden

Time with nature is a source of calm for many people. Creating a small garden for your child to tend to can be fun and rewarding, supporting the development of a number of skills such as planning, preparation and responsibility. It links beautifully with ‘Take Notice’, one of the 5 Ways to Wellbeing.  A small garden in a plant pot is ideal; including a herb that can be used in the kitchen will add a further sense of purpose.

Alternatively, a Zen Garden could be created using a tray or shoe box with about 1 or 2 centimetres deep covering of sand. Pebbles or small rocks are used to create interest and the sand is then raked into patterns; this could be achieved with fingers, pencils or the tools that are often used with modelling clay.