This week is children's mental health week. This year's theme is Express Yourself and is all about finding ways to share your feelings, thoughts or ideas through creativity. This could be through art, music, writing and poetry, dance and drama, photography and film and doing activities which make you feel good. 

What is self-expression, and why is it important?

Self-expression is about communicating your individuality. This can be through words, clothing and hairstyle, or through art forms such as writing, drawing, music and dance. Self-expression can help you to showcase your true self – your story, your thoughts, feelings and emotions. We often get told by our family, friends, school, communities and through social media how we ‘should’ look, think, speak, and act. These constant messages about what we ought to do, and who we ought to be, can make it difficult to let go of expectations and express our true selves.

Self-expression helps us connect to our true self

Self-expression is a great way to relieve yourself of stress and free your mind. Self-expression can help you to reflect on your life, actions, decisions, relationships, beliefs, and thoughts — rather than keep them buried deep down

Your task

Today we would like you to decorate a piece of bunting, this could be triangular, rectangular or another shape.  We want your piece of bunting to represent you. You can then send a picture of your bunting into school through Class Dojo's and we will display them in school.

Our music lesson this week will also follow out theme of expressing yourself. 

Task 1

First we will look at how music communicates emotion.  Watch the video below listening to the different types of music and note how the music makes you feel.  How many different emotions did you feel?

Task 2 

Listen to the song below, how does it make you feel?  Can you learn the words and create some actions for the key words/phrases in the song?  

Task 3 

Can you think of 10 songs that make you feel happy? Why do they make you feel this way? List them and enjoy listening to them.