Putting on our positive pants!

 

Have you ever been told to put your positive pants on? I know I have! This ideology has been harnessed and bought to life by Claire Clements, author of “Put on your positive pants”, a book aimed at helping children to understand their emotions and boost their wellbeing.

I was immediately excited about this book, and after speaking to Claire about her fantastic business (and a mutual love of music bands!) agreed to give her book a read at my Mindfulness club.

My lovely group of Year 3 and 4 children were told previously that they would need their positive pants on for today’s session, and came in intrigued as to what Mrs Maskell was on about!

Upon getting the book out, the penny dropped and they listened with great enthusiasm to the story of Holly, who awakes one morning feeling rather sad. We all agreed we often wake up like this, especially on a Monday and our weekend is over! Holly’s Mum has lots of great ideas about how to turn the negative feelings into positive ones, putting on our “positive pants”.

Of course, mentioning the word “bum” immediately gets a giggle and the children responded as such! I asked the children what they thought of the book afterwards and they gave me these comments:

 

“I loved the positivity board activity idea and how to talk to the birds about your worries”

“I liked the rhyming words”

“I liked the part where they wriggled their bum!”

“I liked how there were activities at the back”

“I liked how it was all very positive in the story”

“I didn’t really like the title, it reminded me of Aliens love underpants and I don’t like that book, but I did like the positive parts of the book, they made me smile”

“I like all of the book, but especially how it is all positive”

 

The children finished the session off by designing their own positive pants as a mini poster they can put up at home to remind them when they are feeling sad, there are ways to make their day more positive. I did suggest that they all go home and dance with their pants on their heads, but not everybody was down with that!!

I for one will be using this book again. I am going to implement the idea of a positivity board next academic year in the Autumn term when planning my next round of mindfulness club activities.  This book does it all for me……makes them laugh, keeps them engaged, gives fantastic tools to help children with their emotions and can lead to many activities on positive mental attitude.

 

You can find out more about this book, resources and the fantastic work Claire does here:

https://positivepants.co.uk/