November 2022 - Healthy Relationships

Thank you to all of the parents and guardians who tried our Positive Mindset activities from last month’s blog. I would love to hear feedback, the positives and negatives, about the participation. Art Smith loves hearing about the things you are doing at home to support what your child is learning at school. 

For the month of November, Northern Lights School Division is focusing on building and maintaining healthy relationships. At Art Smith we will be teaching the elementary students how to set up boundaries for healthy friendships by using the story "The Not-So-Friendly Friend", along with participating in some classroom activities. Here is a read aloud of the book, so you can continue discussions with your family at home: The Not so Friendly Friend

Some of the middle school teachers will be hosting Successful Families, Successful Kids (SFSK) in their classrooms to present a few sessions on healthy relationships. Successful Families-Successful Kids (SFSK) is one project in the Mental Health Capacity Building (MHCB) in Schools initiative, serving over 100,000 students province-wide. The MHCB initiative is based on the belief that mental and emotional well-being can be developed, nurtured and supported through promotion and prevention efforts. When individuals, communities and agencies work together to promote mental and emotional well-being in whole populations of children, youth, and families, we can enhance mental health and decrease addiction as well as the negative impacts of mental illness.

Here is some information about building or maintaining healthy relationships that you can incorporate into your discussions at home:

Print off this free poster so your child can have a visual of tips for making and keeping friends:

Tips for Making and Keeping Friends Poster

If you want some information on how to teach your child about healthy relationships, check out this website: How to Teach Children About Healthy Relationships. It is my thought that the following quote from the article, stresses the importance of not only teaching your children about healthy relationships, but also the importance of modelling for them what that looks like: “Relationships can have a huge impact on children and young people’s lives; it’s important to give them the tools they need to build healthy ones and recognize warning signs. Teaching about healthy relationships could decrease the levels of child exploitation and domestic abuse, and improve your students’ wellbeing and futures” 

Does your family love to play games together? Try this interactive healthy vs. unhealthy relationship snowball game:

Healthy vs. Unhealthy Snowball Fight

For more great resources, check out the Healthy Relationships page of the NLPS website.

If you would like to further discuss healthy relationships, or any counselling related matters, please feel free to contact me at the school at 780-594-1404, or by email at mimi.greengrass@nlsd.ab.ca