A month's worth of activities!

Thanks Judith for sharing your Power Dough recipe – really enjoyed playing with mine ?

Judith’s also been busy filming a series of short videos with her friend Tizz. There are 8 so far, plus a look behind the scenes :side:
All were made with pre-school children in mind & illustrate how roleplay can be used to help people feel empowered and a little safer. I think they're brilliant!
Here’s the link to their YouTube Channel:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCuy6zuLo9dPFR72Ja8iJt2A

Day 23 Activity:
Today’s activity comes from Ann and has got me thinking about how we can adapt and apply this model in the current climate of ‘social distancing’ – I really don’t like this term and much prefer to call it ‘safer spacing’ .
James Stanfield's ‘Circles Model’ provides a ‘colourful’ way to talk about personal space and reinforces an individual’s right to feel safe with other people. By talking about this now, I believe we can help children exercise their right to feel safe, their responsibility to respect other people’s right to feel safe and identify inventive ways to get the connections we all need during a period of ‘safer spacing’ .
Thanks Ann

Day 24 Activity: These are a few of my favourite things.
Today’s activity connects with the 'Collective Safe Place' Activity from the 7th May.
Please find 6 pieces of different coloured paper – they need to be roughly all the same size so you might need to give them a trim or you could use the template below ?
On the first please draw, stick a picture or write the word/s of one of your favourite things to look at.
On the second, draw, stick a picture or write the word/s of one of your favourite things to hear.
On the third, draw, stick a picture or write the word/s of one of your favourite things to smell.
On the fourth, draw, stick a picture or write the word/s of one of your favourite things to taste.
On the fifth, draw, stick a picture or write the word/s of one of your favourite things to touch.
And on the sixth, draw, stick a picture or write the word/s of a ‘feeling’ that comes to mind when you hear the word ‘safe’.
(Here’s one I made earlier – can you spot where the inspiration came from?)
And there’s a blank one underneath if you’d like to have a go at making one.

Now you can either staple them together to make a small flip book or use tape to stick them together in a line and then fold them ‘concertina’ style. Either way, they can then fit in a pocket meaning you can take your multi-sensory ‘Safe Place’ with you anywhere you go ?

Apologies one and all if you too had images of 'raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings, cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels, doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes and silver white winters that melt into springs going through your head all day yesterday! Welcome to my world :silly:
I made another 'Safe Place' fold book for my pocket this morning as on a sunny day like today this is where I'd love to be.

The great thing is I can go there in my imagination on the cloudiest of days too and feel a whole lot safer

Day 25 Activity: Safety Scavenger Hunt
We're into the last week of our 8th birthday celebrations so time to ensure we highlight all 7 Protective Behaviours Strategies as these are the tools needed to 'do PBs' .
And the Strategies are:
1. Theme Reinforcement
2. One-Step Removed
3. Network Review
4. Persistence
5. Protective Interruption
6, Risking on Purpose
7. The Language of Safety
Can you work out which 'tools' from the PB Toolbox are being used in today's activity kindly shared by Ann?

Day 26 Activity: More than bad, sad, mad, glad?
Ann & I often do crosswords together after a day of co-training - sadly we've not been able to do that for a while now However, last night I received a WhatsApp message from Ann asking this one. The clue was 'Misery' and the answer was a 7 letter word: _n_u___?
After a bit of pondering I thought of the word 'Anguish' - it fits, but didn't feel right to me. Nor did it to Ann and we agreed they're in different 'feeling families', Anguish sounds like it's part of the 'worried family' and misery more like the 'sadness family'. The good news is this reminded me of an idea for today's activity. :woohoo:

The Protective Behaviours process is described as a 'practical, down-to-earth approach to personal safety'. It's practical because it's based on our Early Warning Signs: those physical feelings where our body is telling us 'oh-oh, something's not right'. Being able to recognise and name how we're feeling, both physically and emotionally, helps people communicate with each other in an empowered and relationship-enhancing way. We are not blaming anyone else for how we feel, we're simply feeling the feeling.
In order to communicate effectively it's important to use an 'emotionary' of feelings which includes more than the standard mad, sad, bad and glad.
So, today's activity is a bit of a challenge!
In 5 minutes, how many feeling words can you discover in each of the following feeling families: feeling happy, feeling sad, feeling worried and feeling angry. You could call out your answers and/or write them on the chart below. Wondering too if you can work out which PB strategy or strategies it links to?