1M fills their buckets!

As part of Mental Health Wellbeing Week, Tom, the school counsellor, ran a workshop for 1M on Tuesday 20th of February. It focussed on the theme of trying to do things that make people happy. The concept of being a Bucket Filler came from the book by Carol McCloud. Everyone carries an imaginary bucket around with them all day. The bucket represents our feelings and emotions. These are affected by things that happen to us. Our buckets are filled by the nice things that happen to us or by the lovely things people do. For example, if someone gives us a compliment we feel really happy and that’s a bucket filler!

When someone is unkind to us we start to feel unhappy and our bucket takes a ‘dip’ and is less full! Negative experiences are bucket dippers!

Tom encouraged the children to focus on being kind to others and fill other people’s buckets! They also played a Fillers vs Dippers game. Each child had to come a pull a card out of a bucket. If the card was a positive action e.g Helping tidy up at home, the child would go to the Filler’s section. If a child pulled out a negative card, e.g. Steal your friend’s pencil case, they would go the Dipper’s area. .

It was a good exercise in learning that when the bucket is full, this represents us feeling happy and contented. However, when it is empty, we feel sad and upset.

Tom encouraged 1M to do things that make us feel happy and that fill our bucket. A lot of children said that spending time with their family made them happy. Simple things like go to the park, playing with their toys, doing some artwork like colouring were bucket fillers! These simple pleasures are good for your mental wellbeing.

Altea said that she enjoyed the workshop especially the Fillers vs Dippers activity.

Theo felt that Tom was fun and he learnt a lot!