Working from home and school.

Use what is around you to encourage not only learning but focus on wellbeing.

The sky: How does it make you feel when you see the sun's rays shining down on the earth? How does that happen and how can I paint or draw it?

New life: What is happening at this time of year and what is the story that sits behind that? Who cares for the calf and how? Who cares for me and how? How do I feel when I know someone cares for me?

Moody skies: Is my mood reflected in the sky? What sort of sky shows how I am feeling today?

Fractals: Zoom in close to a picture of branches, veins on leaves and observe the patterns. Try recreating these to produce your own branching pattern...a helpful and easy way of self soothing and calming.

Variety: Take a close look at something as simple as a patch of ground and notice all the different tones and shades, the shapes and the layering. Focusing in on something very ordinary (but still spectacularly beautiful) gives us a strategy to ground ourselves, particularly when our thoughts are running wild imagining the worst. "I am here, I am sitting on the ground in my garden, I am safe."

Food: Again focusing in on detail. It is always an interesting exercise to compare and contrast, in this case the leaves being eaten at home with those in the paddock.

Pic-collage: There are many digital tools that can be used to create, arrange and adapt images. Just simple exploration can be satisfying.

Lines and contours: How might we, with only pencil and paper create a drawing that shows the rolling contours, the darkness between the trees and the different textures? Once again, focusing on what is around us helps to shift our focus from what might be currently worrying us, by 'grounding us'. Developing the skill of deeply noticing what is around us builds the skills of noticing what is happening with ourselves, our feelings and emotions.

S for sister...

Taking what is right there... this cushion was next to me and I was unsettled and wondering what to draw. I liked the S shape so recreated it. Having done that I simply sat and gazed at the image. After a while I imagined the top of the letter to be a woman's head and so added a body. The rest evolved and whilst doing it I found myself asking and answering questions, wondering about the role of women and sisters and friends. This can easily be done with children either using a shape which is next to them or a simple scribble pattern and then looking for a picture within the scribble. The richness comes from the discussion about how the image evolved and what was the thinking throughout the process.

Now and Then: By dividing a page in half you can encourage a focus on what the current reality is (left hand image) and what the ideal might look like (right hand image). Similar in idea to coaching techniques where we clarify what the situation looks like at present, and what it might look like with some improvement or what the ideal might look like in the future. This activity might help children (and adults) to find a way to make those steps towards autonomy and having some control over how they experience things. For example: when I am working on my device from home I don't feel heard, knowing that some of my friends are at school and I am not. What I would like is some time to share my learning with them so I feel involved and a part of what is happening at school. Unable perhaps to articulate this initially, creating images gives the child a reference to talk about, and talking about the meaning of the image is one step removed from talking about themselves directly.