How active literacy can help children’s mental health

This week is National Self Care Week and the theme is exercise. Self care is important for mental and physical health, and exercise helps with both! The BBC have launched Moodbosters to help children get moving to boost their mental health and wellbeing.

Did you know that exercise can be incorporated into literacy learning and vice versa?

It’s not just exercise that helps with anxiety and stress. Creative writing helps too and can really improve mental health. Why not combine the two with our range of active creative writing sessions.

Physical movement activates our brain in different ways. Sometimes children who struggle to write when sitting still can find words more easily when their whole body is engaged.

But it’s not just reluctant writers who benefit from movement. Even confident writers find they think different thoughts when creativity is matched with a physical task. Active literacy is good for learning and for improving mental and physcial health. 

Wild Literacy has a great selection of ideas for teaching literacy in an active way. It’s a big part of how we think about literacy – and why we provide activities instead of just lessons.

Try one of these activities involving physical exercise:

• throw and catch characters
• playing paper tennis to get scene ideas
• noun treasure hunt (part of a Level 1 course Module 1 – free with Basic Membership)
• football poetry (free with Basic Membership during FIFA Men’s World Cup)
• Russian children’s games

Or one of these activities that involve other types of movement

• tension-building game
• verb/adverb charades (part of a Level 2 course Module 1 – free with Basic Membership)
• costume characters
• express yourself