99 Activities to Nurture Successful and Resilient Children

A Comprehensive Programme to Develop Fundamental Life Skills

Susana Goncalves Viana

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138560260
• eBook ISBN: 9781351361460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

99 Activities to Nurture Successful and Resilient Children is a comprehensive and interactive programme filled with practical activities, aimed at schools and education professionals in order to support children in developing their happiness and resilience. Covering twenty eight skill areas, this book encompasses seven key themes for development:

• Self-awareness
• Relationships
• Confidence
• Seeking solutions
• Growth mindset
• Caring
• Optimism

The author has created ninety-nine fun, creative and engaging classroom activities, which clearly and expertly guide the professional in supporting a child's happiness and emotional resilience. Children as young as seven can access the programme and get involved with each activity. This vital resource focuses on all the core areas that contribute to the growth of a child's most important positive qualities, providing a much-needed burst of enthusiasm and expertise to the field. 99 Activities to Nurture Successful and Resilient Children will empower children and help them build a fundamental skill-set that will help them to successfully navigate life and to grow as confident, aware, resourceful, independent, and motivated individuals.

Section 1 Introduction

What is this book all about?

Looking more closely at these different areas

What’s different about this book?

Why do we need a book like this now?

Myths

What is this book all about?

No matter where in the world you are, when you ask parents and teachers what they wish for their children, the most common answer is for them to be happy, to do well, and to be able to cope and succeed. This is a reasonable wish, but when you stop and think about it, you wonder how children can actually become happier and more resilient, and achieve success in what they do. What do adults have to do and what do children have to do to make sure this happens?

The first thing to think about is: what elements make for a happy life? It’s not just about enjoyable moments and fleeting laughter because these don’t last very long. It’s got to be something broader, something with a little more substance. Something that can develop and last a lifetime. Sometimes you hear people say, “When I get that, I’ll be happy” or “When I achieve this, I’ll be happy”; a new house or car, a promotion, more money – somehow it seems that all of these things will lead to more happiness. They may, for a little while, but what happens next? Once you have that new car, you’ll end up wanting an even newer one. If you get that promotion, you’ll then aspire to get the next one. If you get more money, it will feel great, but then you’ll want to get even more. A lot of people out there who have a great deal of money still complain that they are not happy. It’s all never quite enough, so we repeat the same process, “I’ll be happy when […]”.

It therefore seems that happiness has much more to it than just getting something you want; it will certainly help in the interim, but it’s just not enough. It seems to be more about who you are within yourself, how you feel about yourself and what you do, and how you cope out there in the real world. Happiness is not something from the outside, trying to get in. It’s something on the inside, trying to get out. I think if people try to become happier by getting more of what’s around them, they’ll spend all their lives searching for something they may never find. What if they try to become happier by using and being grateful for what they have and being true to who they are? Could they then comfortably take charge of all the world has to offer them? Wouldn’t it be great if children could do that too?

However, it’s not just about happiness because in order for children to cope and deal with the hard times, they need to be resilient. That means that they need to be able to adapt to change and problem-solve when they find themselves in tricky situations. They need to know how to make plans, how to spot when things can go wrong, and then how to use their strengths and what they know to make things better. They also need to know that when things get really tough, they have the know-how to deal with this and move forward.

Children can learn how to do things on their own, but they also pick up so much from those around them, especially the adults that are part of their lives. Their main role-models are their parents and their teachers, whom they watch closely and who they learn from. But children learn so much more when they actually interact and engage with these adults; together they build their skills and develop their ability to use these skills when they are most needed. So, what better way to learn new things than adults and children working together, having fun together, and building skills together that will last them a lifetime? This is what this book is all about; it focuses on adults working with children at school, and then parents working with them at home so that together, they can start a wonderful journey of self-discovery, resilience, and success, now and into the future.

Looking more closely at these different areas

Being happy and resilient combines different areas that children need to develop over time. If real happiness depends on being true to yourself, and being resilient means coping with the world around you, then what are the most important things that we need to focus on developing? Well, to be true to yourself, you’ve got to know who you are, and that includes recognising how you feel and what you believe. We need to feel close and connected to others to feel happy, and building strong and loving relationships have at their core, caring for others. When facing tough and tricky times, being able to find solutions and coping with any challenge, builds confidence. If you’re confident and motivated, happiness comes much more easily because things just can’t get us down. You need to be able to believe in your ability and in your potential to grow so that you can persist through challenges and accomplish whatever you set your mind to. It’s true, you become what you think and what you feel; if you feel and think in a positive and optimistic way, then life will be positive. Optimism is a powerful force that affects every area of our lives in a good way, and therefore is a main part of being happy and resilient.

In order to help children develop true happiness and a level of resiliency that will enable them to deal with any hardship or stress, we need to work on the following areas:

1 Self-awareness

2 Relationships

3 Confidence

4 Seeking solutions

5 Growth mindset

6 Caring

7 Optimism

These are the main areas that this book focuses on, by using fun and creative activities that you can carry out with the children that you work with at school. This way they are developing their skills in a collaborative way with you so that you are supporting them, not teaching them. What better way to help children discover and learn ways to become happier and more resilient than you working right alongside them? So, are you ready for the challenge?

What’s different about this book?

There are books out there that focus on either improving children’s self-esteem, or their ­happiness, or their confidence, or their relationships, or their problem-solving skills. However, this book focuses on developing all of these areas because they are all just as important when you’re trying to help children become the best that they can be.

The majority of books out there include helping older children and young people, but the activities in this book can be done with children as young as age seven. The earlier children develop these skills, the more they can build on them, and the easier things will become as they get older.

There are so many books out there where the activities that children are asked to engage in involve them doing a great deal of listening and talking, but this isn’t the most effective way for them to learn. Children love doing things that are creative and fun, and when they do this, they find it easier to remember what they have been working on and what they have learnt. Most children find it really hard to sit and talk about themselves and their feelings, and don’t get much out of just talking through scenarios and listening to an adult tell them the right thing to do. We want children to be independent, to reflect on who they are, and to think and work things out for themselves. Therefore, we as adults need to come down to their level and do things that are practical and in context with their own experiences and interests. This book offers a variety of activities that are fun and that encourage children and adults to make, build, and imagine things together. This approach makes so much more sense to children and young people, because who just wants to sit around and listen and talk? Where’s the fun in that?

Many books out there are reactive; that is, they try and help children who are already finding things hard. They might be feeling bad about themselves, or they may have no friends, or they might be finding it hard to cope and deal with their feelings. But this book is proactive. It helps build skills right from the start so that children don’t get to that negative point where they have to be helped to make things better. Isn’t it so much better for children to learn from the get-go how to feel good, how to focus on their strengths, and deal with the world in a positive way? Think of all the problems that can be solved if children have this positive and confident outlook right from the start? Positive and proactive children develop into positive and proactive teenagers, and then into positive and proactive adults. What a wonderful world it can be if children, teenagers, and adults are happy, confident, resilient, and successful! Could children then grow up to cope with all that life throws at them? Could they develop their strengths so that they can make a huge difference in the world? If they could do all of this, could there be an increase in the joy, the connection, and the strength of individuals and communities? I think there can, if we start with one child at a time.

Why do we need a book like this now?

We live in such a modern world, filled with new technology, with easier access to the world around us, and so many new opportunities. Children today have so much more available to them than they did 20 years ago, but yet they seem to be the unhappiest they’ve ever been. Report after report seems to come out every year now, telling us how unhappy children are, especially in some of the most economically advanced countries in the world like the United States and the United Kingdom.

Every day, there seem to be more and more difficulties in the world; problems with the economy, rates of mental health issues rising, more unemployment, unrest in different countries, increasing incidents of crime and terrorism, and many, many others. These complex issues can have a significant impact on children and adults. Then there are other problems that can sometimes be closer to home and to the children that we work with: unhappiness, anxiety, loneliness, anger, depression, feeling out of control or feeling that you don’t belong. When children feel this way, they worry, they get angry, and they feel hopeless and helpless. We therefore need to stop this from happening, for two important reasons.

First of all, if children can develop their own sense of self-worth, happiness, wellbeing and resilience, they are better able to adapt and cope in the world we live in today.

Secondly, if children grow up being able to cope, they become adults that cope, which impacts positively on their own families, their communities, and the world around them. If many children have this kind of impact on the world, wouldn’t that make things better; more so than they are now? I think it’s certainly worth trying!

There is so much pressure and demand in the world today, for teaching staff and for parents. Teachers have to cope with changes to the curriculum, increased bureaucracy and decreasing funding, carrying out a ream of different tests, and differentiating for every individual need within their class. This has an impact on what areas they can focus on, on how much time they have to dedicate to non-academic subjects, and on their own stress levels and wellbeing. At school, children are taught great things about literature, maths, and science, but not much time is spent supporting them to develop the skills needed to be resilient, to be happy, and to develop their own wellbeing. The problem is these non-academic areas are the foundation to successful learning and development. If a child is not confident, happy, and resilient, they will find it very hard to be an effective learner. If they can’t problem-solve life’s trickier situations from an early age, how can they grow up to be creative and independent thinkers and positive members of their community? If children don’t develop these vital skills, then we keep feeding that ‘corrosive monster of the modern age’ that thrives on depression, truancy, unemployment, unrest, anger, crime, amongst so many other issues. So, the cycle continues, but we need to break it.

A report called the ‘Character and Resilience Manifesto’ has highlighted that schools are not preparing children to cope with life by supporting them to develop attributes such as self-belief, character, and grit. These are known as ‘soft skills’ but are the ones that lead to hard results, because life chances and the ability for children to reach their potential goes beyond test scores and academics. Fortunately, there’s now a call to action to make resilience part of a school’s core focus. What this means for schools is th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Section 1 Introduction
• Section 2 Top tips for teachers
• Section 3 Self–awareness
• Section 4 Relationships
• Section 5 Confidence
• Section 6 Seeking solutions
• Section 7 Growth mindset
• Section 8 Caring
• Section 9 Optimism
• References