Wheels to WELL-BEING ESMP
Happiness is a state of mind or a mood. Pre-teens and teenagers are usually happier when they’re satisfied with their lives and relationships, although nobody is happy all the time.
Wellbeing comes from physical, mental and emotional health. It’s also about understanding your emotions, taking part in different activities, having good relationships and social connections, finding meaning in life and feeling that you’re doing well.
Happiness and wellbeing are related, but they’re not the same thing. Pre-teens and teenagers can be happy because of some of the things that make up wellbeing, but they don’t need all these things to be happy.
Boosting pre-teens and teenage happiness: tips
You can boost your child’s happiness with praise and encouragement, clear rules and boundaries, a healthy family lifestyle and warm family relationships.
Praise, encouragement and positive attention
Praise, encouragement and positive attention let your child know that you value them, their good deeds and their contribution to your life.
Give your child praise when they do things like helping out, doing chores or getting their homework done. For example, ‘I really appreciate it when you put your dirty clothes in the laundry bin’.
Give your child attention. For example, go to watch your child playing sport, send your child a friendly text message, or just give them a special smile or hug.
Encourage your child to try new things. For example, if your child is interested in playing a new sport, you could offer to take them along to the local club’s registration day.
Value your child’s strengths, and praise your child for who they are. For example, ‘You’re really good at looking after the younger children in your Scout group’. This helps your child feel good about themselves and might stop your child comparing themselves with other people.
Let your child know that you’re proud of them when they try, especially when things are tough. For example, ‘I was so proud of you for running all the way in your cross country race, even though I could see you were tired’.
Rules and boundaries
Clear and fair rules help pre-teens and teenagers feel safe when a lot of things in their lives are changing. If you involve your child in making the rules, they’ll be more likely to stick to them. Negotiating rules with your child is also a way of showing that you respect your child’s growing maturity.
Healthy lifestyle
Encourage good sleep habits: pre-teens need 9-11 hours of sleep, and teenagers need 8-10 hours of sleep a night. It’s best for your child to avoid digital technology use in the hour before bedtime.
Help your child aim for at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day.
Encourage your child to make healthy food choices to fuel their growth and development.
Help your child keep a healthy balance between study, work and play. This might mean looking at how many nights your child is out doing things, how much down time your child has, how much your child can contribute to family life through chores, how many family meals you have together and so on.
Family relationships
Share and make memories together. For example, take photos or videos on special family days or at school events and look over them with your child, or talk about and remember things you’ve enjoyed as a family.
Make time to talk about individual and family successes. For example, you could try going around the table at family meals and encourage everyone to share something that went well for them during the day.
Establish and maintain family rituals. For example, cook pancakes on Saturday mornings, watch special movies together, go for milkshakes after school on Fridays and so on.
For older teenagers, happiness depends a lot on having freedom to make choices without too many restrictions – although they still need you to monitor what they’re doing. It’s about being respected, developing independently of parents or carers, making their own friendships and social life, and being taken seriously as individuals.
Boosting pre-teen and teenage wellbeing: tips
Here are ideas for fostering different aspects of pre-teen and teenage wellbeing.
Physical health
When your child takes care of themselves physically, it’s good for their wellbeing. For example, being active, having a break from digital technology, getting outside and getting enough sleep can boost your child’s mood and improve their physical fitness.
Mental and emotional health
Good mental and emotional health is important for pre-teen and teenage wellbeing. Your love and support and a strong relationship with you can have a direct and positive influence on your child’s mental health.
You can also boost your child’s mental and emotional health by helping them develop:
resilience, which is being able to cope with difficult situations and ‘bounce back’ when things go wrong
self-compassion, which is treating themselves kindly when things don’t go well
confidence, which is believing that they’ll be successful and make good decisions.
A positive focus
If your child can notice and appreciate the good things in their life, your child is more likely to feel positive. This can also help your child keep difficult times in perspective, so they don’t become overwhelming.
Your child can do this by just taking a few moments each day to focus on what they’re grateful for. You could even make this a family activity by asking everyone at the dinner table to name one thing they’re grateful for. You can be grateful for all sorts of things, like being together at dinner, the sun shining, farmers getting the rain they need, good health, good friends and so on.
Different activities
Trying new things and getting involved in different activities keeps your child’s options open and can build your child’s confidence and self-worth. You can encourage your child by helping them find activities they might be interested in. It’s also important to praise your child for being open to new things and willing to have a go.
Relationships and social connections
Relationships and social connections are vital for pre-teen and teenage wellbeing. Your child needs close and supportive family and friends. And good parent-child relationships tend to lead to good friendships.
Meaning in life
Meaning in life can come from doing good things for others. Your child could look for everyday ways to help family or friends – for example, giving someone their seat on the bus, helping grandparents around the house, or helping someone pick up papers they’ve dropped in the street. Or your child could get involved in community activity. This type of ‘giving’ lights up the reward centre in the brain, which makes your child feel good.
Feeling connected to something bigger can also help to give your child’s life a sense of purpose. Meaning might come from spirituality, life philosophy, or a commitment to a cause like the environment. People with meaning have less stress and get more out of what they do.
Goals and achievement
Goals can give your child a sense of purpose and achievement when the goals:
fit with your child’s values
make your child happy
are meaningful and attainable
let your child use their strengths.
https://raisingchildren.net.au/teens/mental-health-physical-health/about-mental-health/happy-teens
The students are to be fully informed about the rules of being safe online, netiquette and the code of conduct. It is important to be safe online!
Be safe online!
Be safe online!
Our first meeting is valuable as we got to know each other. Moreover we discussed about the importnace of being safe online and being careful when it comes to our wellbeing.
We played a Kahoot game on online safety!
Our meeting on the 14th of February
On the 13th of February, we organized our first meeting online. Our students were asked to log on mentimeter and supply answers to two questions; What is well-being in their opinion, and in the opinion what is more important social wellbeing, physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, or mental well-being, or all are equally important? The answers students supplied were pretty interesting.< The mentimeter activity was followed by them presenting themselves and why they consider wellbeing an important topic these days. The conversation was quite interesting and some follow-up questions led the discussion to the importance of being safe online. The game we played on Kahoot was not that challenging for our students as they are very familiar with the rules of being safe online.
The results of our survey show the importnace of paying attention to wellbeing in context of so much dependance on the online world. Students lack connections and this affects their emotional, physical, mental and social wellbeing.
The start of our research:
Students' presentations on the importance of wellbeing
The more we talk about how to handle stress the better our students deal with anxiety.
Collaboration among our students
Students shared their presentation with younger students and discussed about habits and pastimes that influence our wellbeing. The groups of 4-5 students managed to discover ways of dealing with stress and anxiety. Students discussed wellbeing by paying attention to physical, mental, social and emotional wellbeing.
The magazine presented is the outcome of all the students' presentations and the way that they see how to deal with issues that would be harmful to their wellbeing.
International Book of Gratitude
The students were asked to create a thank you letter that would be our sign of appreciation to our loved ones. It is important to mention that students were the ones who chose the person to whom the letter should be sent to. The letters are heart-warming and welcome in the classroom as they transmit a feeling of appreciation so needed in the modern days. The letters were hand written on purpose as to make them more real.
OUR LOGOS
Students have been asked to vote on the logos they consider to represent the project idea and goal.
Dear students,
We ask you to kindly submit your answers for the logo representing our project logo.
Having a project logo for an educational project can offer various advantages:
1. *Visual Identity:* A logo gives your project a visual identity that can help with brand recognition and create a memorable impression on stakeholders, including students, parents, and teachers.
2. *Professionalism:* A well-designed logo can make your project appear more professional and credible, instilling confidence in participants and partners.
3. *Differentiation:* A unique logo can help distinguish your project from others in a competitive educational landscape, making it easier for people to identify and associate with your specific initiative.
4. *Communication:* A logo can convey the essence and values of your educational project at a glance, visually representing its mission, goals, and target audience.
5. *Marketing and Promotion:* A logo can be a powerful marketing tool, aiding in promoting your project, attracting participants, and engaging with the community through various channels.
In summary, a project logo can play a vital role in enhancing an educational initiative's visibility, professionalism, and communication, ultimately contributing to its overall success and impact.
INTERNATIONAL VOTING ON THE REPRESENTATIVE LOGO FOR THE PROJECT
Students voted
Results
The winning logo
Our mascot for you!
Dear students add a page to the mascot and with every page added, include a change, an element that would complete our MASCOT for the project. Every team is going to decide what elements to add and will change the mascot as to make it as representative as possible for our project!
Be as creative as you want!
Dear all students,
welcome to the international mixed teams activity of our project!
From now on, you will start to write a STORY BEGINNING with your international Team 1 members above.
To do this, we shall use STATION TECHNIQUE by which you will share the lines or sentences that one of you will write and then the other will continue. This will go on one after another. You can write together as many sentences as you would prefer.
Just keep in mind to mention that you would complete the beginning of the story when you all agree on it: For this, remember to write “COMPLETED”
Then please remember to illustrate the beginning of the story for our project with a picture added in this document.
We strongly recommend you to make and agree on the division of the tasks especially while illustrating the beginning of the story you will write.
Please communicate and collaborate with your team members! You can also use “Comment” feature of that document above to write messages to your team members.
Please do not hesitate to ask for help from your teachers in case you need it!
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR WORK and ENJOY THE ACTIVITY! 🙂
INTERNATIONAL MIXED GROUP 1
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Bvc7h7SjjCnLHleeWHiC8at-G6RjGJCKUtqav0K88A/edit?usp=sharing
INTERNATIONAL MIXED GROUP 2
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RA57Trt2pmQ__PXi-E1WMMX-OFWSdJ6lceh8QpCD2e0/edit?usp=sharing
INTERNATIONAL MIXED GROUP 3
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_q1BPSJbjEvA42ABZbqIiHECl8N2D8v3W9tHUt7u7Hs/edit?usp=sharing
INTERNATIONAL MIXED GROUP 4
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YZegIKpWjXSWM8AO3f7T0yGl1Dl-MYHoaXtJ7Obag4U/edit?usp=sharing
INTERNATIONAL MIXED GROUP 5
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o3hGnfSZPW0ZwKCEIrRH4l_dMMUSCU47jAWvpbLT4nw/edit?usp=sharing
INTERNATIONAL MIXED GROUP 6
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16gsOe3Ec0-s-8A14dQwNirYqpiVysuD3BUA-QbWB2y8/edit?usp=sharing
Our story is based on the importance of accepting each other as we are, pay attention to our wellbeing and motivate our dear ones to never back down and move forward as there will always be those who are going to help you in need!
https://www.storyjumper.com/book/read/170230591/65e80380e4771
Dissemination of our project on our website and national NSO