Healthy Mind Champions
At Brightside Nursery Infant School, we have been engaging with the Healthy Minds Project in Sheffield. Healthy Minds puts emotional resilience at the heart of children’s health and wellbeing and recognises its impact on learning, behaviour and attainment. By providing a stable, nurturing and protective environment, we can help children learn how to regulate their emotions and develop healthy relationships with peers and school staff. These abilities will have a huge impact on their emotional resilience and satisfaction with their lives.
Sally Harksby is our Education Mental Health Practitioner and is in school on Thursdays between 12pm - 3pm. She will be supporting the children in emotions groups and friendship groups as well as supporting the school with Healthy Minds.
Mrs Danielle Jenkins-Omar is our Designated Safeguarding Lead who supports the school's Healthy Mind Champions and meets with them regularly.
For more information about the Healthy Minds Project please click here.
2026-2027
Autumn term
The children have now been selected as Healthy Mind Champions and we are all so excited to get started!
During the autumn term we are going to be exploring what a healthy mind is, feelings, how to keep our bodies calm, what a worry is and what makes a good friend.
Our Healthy Mind Champions will help to spread kindness, help others and make sure everyone feels included!
Spring term
Summer term
Here's what we achieved last academic year.....
2025-2026
Autumn term
This term our classes have been talking about Healthy Minds and what it means to be a Healthy Mind Champion. Pupils put themselves forward and we now have 8 new Healthy Mind Champions!
Spring term
During the Spring term our Healthy Mind Champions are looking at friendships, how we can help and support each other and the zones of regulation. We have started exploring the different zones, what emotion we feel in them and strategies we can use to get us back to the green zone!
Summer term
During the Summer term our Healthy Mind Champions will be helping in the playgrounds at lunchtimes with our OPAL programme, helping other friends learn the enviornment and how to be good friends. Towards the end of the Summer term we will have a focus on transition and prepare for the next steps from September.
Well done to all the Healthy Mind Champions for their amazing work and contribution last year!
We continue to use 'the Zones of Regulation' in school. It's working really well and helping children realise when they are ready to learn or need help to get them in their learning zone.
Children use colours to let us know how their feeling:
Red - feeling really big emotions - angry, really upset or really scared.
Yellow - feeling excited, wriggly or worried.
Green - just right - where we want children to be - feeling calm, ready to learn, ok, content, in their thinking brain.
Blue - feeling slow, bored, poorly, sad, tired, switched off or in their own little world.
We've also been using some mindfulness techniques to help children calm down and return to GREEN and be ready to learn. Please see pictures below for more information.