EARLY Minds

EARLY Minds (Emotional Awareness and Resilience Learnt Young) is our mental health programme that we take into primary schools. Our sessions are age appropriate with a variety of activities to enable both children and adults to learn to talk about and take care of their own mental health and to better understand how to help those around them.

Who is it for?

From early years to Year 6 including transitions to secondary school
Teachers and school staff
Parents and carers

EARLY Minds is inclusive and age-appropriate from Reception to Year 6.

We want children and adults to have the same knowledge and a shared language. Through EARLY Minds:

We give the school a shared language between pupils and staff to talk about mental health in everyday conversations to create culture change
We teach children how to link feelings they are experiencing with met or unmet emotional needs
We equip them with practical strategies to help themselves and others to return to wellbeing
We give them scientific understanding of how the brain works and why everyone copes with challenges in different ways

What will children learn?

EARLY Minds introduces skills and knowledge that lay the foundation for life-long mental wellbeing through whole class workshops.

In our core lessons children will learn how to:

Identify and speak about their feelings
Change unhelpful thoughts into helpful ones
Practise skills to calm strong emotions helping them to become free from worry so they can relax, engage and learn
Dragon breath (7/11 breathing)

Our core (age appropriate) lessons include:

‘Understanding emotional needs’
‘How to be free from worry’
‘How to calm strong emotions such as anger or fear’

Our focused topics also include:

Flexible thinking
Increasing focus and motivation
Building relationships
Resisting peer pressure
Preventing bullying
Coping with new situations and challenges

How is EARLY Minds delivered?

90 minute sessions are delivered by qualified trainers from Suffolk Mind. We creatively engage children using developmentally appropriate strategies, including stories, exploratory questions, activities, games and movements as well as hand illustrated cards to aid many different learning styles.

Each year group lesson plan works alongside the curriculum and is linked to the Emotional Needs & Resources approach.

This course also includes:

An online parent assembly
The Mental Health Toolkit: The Essentials course for max. 16 staff members
Evaluation feedback

Resource boxes

Suffolk Mind will leave your school with a resource box for KS1 and KS2 so that your school community can continue their EARLY Minds journey. Each box contains activities specifically designed for either KS1 or KS2 children. Each activity is used in our EARLY Minds sessions, linking to each emotional need.

Extra boxes are available to purchase

100%

of teachers strongly agreed that the content of the sessions were relevant and applicable to the children in their class

How to book

If you’d like to enquire about a session, email schools@suffolkmind.org.uk. Alternatively you can give us a call on 0300 111 6000.

Length: Half Day

Attendees: 1 class, max attendees 30 children.

Length: Full Day

Attendees: 2 classes, max attendees 30 children per class.

Enquire

Register your interest, and we’ll be in touch for the next steps to support mental wellbeing in your school or activity group.

Don’t forget to check if you’re eligible for any of our funded training.

More from The Mental Health Kitbag

Life Hacks for the Teenage Brain

45 minutes

A 45-minute presentation provided by Suffolk Mind, introducing mental health and Emotional Needs to help teenage wellbeing.

View course

The Teenage Toolkit

2.5 hour workshop in school

Supporting teenage mental health is key to enable people to become resilient, emotionally aware and well-resourced adults. Our interactive workshops fit seamlessly into the school day, delivered by our experienced trainer.

View course

Schools Wellbeing Culture Programme

Long-term

Our long-term programme, which embeds mental wellbeing in your school's culture and creates lasting change within the workplace.

View course

Includes The Essentials training for staff (max 16 delegates for face-to-face training, 12 delegates for our interactive training) and a resource box for teachers to keep and use within classes following training.

Additional class support sessions

Following Early Minds, additional focused and intensive workshops can be added for specific classes as needed or if an issue arises. This approach is designed to support the development of specific classes who would benefit from emotional development.

Extra resources

Additional resource boxes

Schools who have had EARLY Minds training can purchase additional Resource Boxes for more classrooms. The boxes come with activity sheets as well as all of the props for teachers to lead their class through a fun and interactive wellbeing session.

You can order either a KS1 box, a KS2 box, or one or more of each. Please email schools@suffolkmind.org.uk to order your extra boxes.

Email us

Emotional needs and resources

Please see a link to a video you can use to explain the emotional needs and resources to children to enable them to stay mentally well.

Watch the video

Sammy the Sea Squirt

Our Head of Education, Ezra Hewing has written a fun, psychologically informed storybook, showing the benefits of exercise on mental health. It’s called Sammy the Sea Squirt, and every Reception aged child (four-to-five-year-olds) in Suffolk is receiving a copy. We want to teach children at a young age how to look after their mental health, which is extremely important.

Movement session

Resource cards

Our EARLY Minds Emotional Needs and Resources cards are available to purchase to help teach your young people how to stay mentally well.

Buy yours

Children will be able to use their new knowledge of their own brain to think about how to manage big emotions and feelings. I can absolutely see children using dragon breathing

EARLY Minds brings everyone around the children together, so children learn to have more empathy for themselves and others