School Linking Open Day – An experience

Last Wednesday the Education and Learning Team held a Virtual School Linking Open Day for primary schools. We had whole classes joining us collectively over Zoom for a 90-minute creative exploration of the theme ‘How we live together?’.

Our session followed the journey of Blob the Alien, who visited Earth for the first time. We learned together how to make Blob (and people) welcome in our spaces and communities. Some of our favourite ideas on how to help Blob were:

• ‘Show them around so that they know where everything is and they won’t feel out of place!’ and
• ‘Showing him how to get a Gold card’.

You can see all fab ideas below and get some inspiration for creating your own SAFE SPACE.

We also trialled a new F&BF approach to Wellbeing – Mood Makers and Shakers reflective drawing. With a selection of 5 songs (3 of which were kindly lent to us by the Faiths in Tune music festival), a piece of paper, and some drawing materials, students reflected feelings, emotions and imagery as inspired by the music. The clothing of the musicians tickled everyone’s imagination too! Our participants turned out to be extremely sensitive and in-tune with the positive impact that music can have:

• ‘The fourth piece of music was familiar and reminded me of going to mosque.’
• ‘It made us feel very happy because it had an upbeat tempo.’
• ‘FELT JUBILANT’

Last but not least, we talked about the importance of small actions and being kind. We heard a story about a girl rescuing starfish one at a time, and a beautiful kindness poem. These encouraged everyone to commit to an act of kindness which will improve their community, home or classroom.

At the end of the session, we asked the children about what they enjoyed and what they did not. It seems like all our activities were enjoyed equally:

• ‘The starfish activity was lots of fun and we love how creative everything was.’
• ‘We enjoyed listening to the music and being able to share our feelings with each other.’
• ‘We cannot wait for you to visit our school!’

We cannot wait to visit your schools either!

If you missed this fun, creative session but would like to get involved, please drop us a line. We’ll be organising more of these soon and our School Linking programme is open for sign-ups until September too!