This week, students in the Year 2 Neighbourhood were introduced to the famous ‘Year 2 Buddy Project’. After great success with last year’s Year 2s, we’re looking forward to building on this initiative to help strengthen relationships within the neighbourhood, with a focus on wellbeing. Every two weeks, students will be paired up with someone in the neighbourhood, giving them a chance to get to know more about their peers, and spend time with others outside of their friendship and home groups. A couple of times a week, students will spend some time with their buddies – for example, this week students have spent some time introducing themselves to each other and brainstorming and asking eachother questions, sat with their buddy for one lunch time, and shared their timeline research topic and rationale that they had written earlier in the week with each other.
The concept of the Buddy Project ties in well with another wellbeing initiative we’re focusing on this term as a whole school, which is the CASEA program developed by the Royal Children’s Hospital Mental Health Team. The CASEA Program promotes young children’s social, emotional and behavioural development, and aims to help children understand and express emotions, and be better at problem solving and getting along with others.