Hi, I’m Melissa, the author of our wellbeing collection, made with the help of my daughter Ayla. The role of wellbeing in education is becoming more of a focus. Life skills such as emotional intelligence, resilience and stress management are now recognised as essential to our communities.
Wellbeing education is also very personal to me. The last research papers of my degree explored a branch of art therapy known as art-based research, leading me to study positive psychology. I had imagined working with adults until I had my child and watched her form her perception of the world as she approached every new experience, navigated her transition from home to kindergarten to school, coped with testing, social interactions, and the pressure to be “good” and do things “right”. This caused me to question, why wait until we are adults seeking therapy or cruising the self-help section to develop our emotional strategies? Let’s make wellbeing an intrinsic part of early education.
These books are a direct result of conversations Ayla and I have together, sharing our opinions of how our perception creates our experience and the ways we can reframe our thoughts and choose our feelings to feel better. We observed the people around us struggling with a lack of self-belief, and Ayla expressed her wish to write with me to “help other kids to feel better”. Her love of learning is a direct result of her love of books and wellbeing is a natural part of her vocabulary.
This collection was created with the idea that growing up having a wellbeing toolkit could give you the confidence and self-belief to view life, with all it’s ups and downs, as a grand adventure.
To support teaching wellbeing in early education, I have created some value pack options. Included are a range of wellbeing posters such as ‘how to make a friend’ and ‘choose a greeting’ posters along with teachers’ notes to help put positive engagement strategies into practice.
These packs are available for a limited time via the link below-
