Prioritising children’s well-being and mental health is a matter that deserves to be made a high priority at this time. With that in mind, author and former primary school teacher Fiona Forman has written a new educational well-being programme for our youngest primary school children, called Welcome to Well-Being.
It will be published in Ireland by Outside the Box Learning Resources, and has already been signed up for the Australian market by Hawker Brownlow Education, with more international deals expected to follow soon.
Fiona, who has many years’ experience as a primary teacher, holds an M. Sc in Applied Positive Psychology and is co-author of the internationally used Weaving Well-Being programme, for children from second to sixth class. She has always been passionate about children’s mental health and well- being. Fiona left her teaching career in January 2020 and launched her own business, Fiona Forman Well-Being, in order to concentrate on her writing and also to provide training and well-being workshops for schools.
Welcome to Well Being is based on Positive Psychology, and is designed in accordance with the SPHE curriculum. It features 2 friendly aliens, Mo and Ko from the planet Zo, who visit Earth to help children to feel happy, strong, brave, kind and well. Helping children to understand and deal with their emotions in a positive way is a key aim of the programme, as is building self-compassion and resilience. The programme was piloted with over 700 children in 14 schools all around Ireland, and feedback was incredibly positive. Independent academic research is underway and will be available later this year, with initial findings showing that the programme is having a positive impact on children’s well-being.
The launch of the programme will take place online on May 6th at 7.30pm, when Fiona will be joined by journalist and writer Geraldine Walsh to talk about how we can nurture children’s resilience and well-being at this time.
The link to register for the live launch is available here.
To find out more about Welcome to Wellbeing, including a summary of the findings of the pilot stage, click here.
Social Media Links: find Fiona on Instagram here, and on Twitter here.
