What is PATHS all about?

This term we will be focusing on PATHS.

Promoting Positive Thinking Strategies is a social and emotional development programme. It aims to help children to be aware of their feelings, to be able to talk about them and to find good ways of dealing with uncomfortable feelings. It also teaches the children problem solving skills and helps them to develop good relationships with their peers.

Each week the children will have a circle time where they will have the opportunity to learn about and discuss their feelings, with the help of Twiggle and his puppet friends.

As part of this time the children are going to be learning about compliments. Each week a child will be chosen to be Twiggle’s special helper and will receive compliments from the rest of the children that will be written up and given home at the end of the week in a special certificate. When it is your child’s turn, we ask that you would also share a compliment with them. We hope that this will help the children to develop in their self esteem and the support and respect they show each other as friends.

We have a Talking and Thinking book out in the corridor that gives further information, please feel free to have a look at it. We will also be adding your children’s learning and experiences to it as the term progresses.

Here are some suggestions of things you can be doing at home to support and develop this learning;

• Talk to your child about their feelings  Encourage them to name their feelings
• Ask them how they know someone is feeling a particular way by looking for facial clues
• Ask them to give you real life examples of how they feel so they can link their experiences to their feelings.
• Encourage them to recognise how other people might be feeling, e.g. family members or characters in books or films

Over this term we are going to be using a health and wellbeing curriculum with the children called PATHS.

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies aims to help the children to develop their social skills by learning how to express how they feel, understand the feelings of others better and learn appropriate ways to deal with negative feelings. This will be done through circle times and with the help of Twiggles the turtle and his puppet friends.

As part of this programme the children are going to be learning about compliments. Each week a child will be chosen to be Twiggle’s special helper and will receive compliments from the rest of the children that will be written up and given home at the end of the week. When it is your child’s turn, we ask that you would also share a compliment about your child that can be added to their list. We hope that this will help the children to develop in their self esteem and the support and respect they show each other as friends.

We will be sharing more with you about this as the term continues so please keep a look out on the notice board in the corridor!

View PATHS information leaflet for more information.