The Welcome to Well-Being programme is a multi-year programme for children from Junior Infants to First Class (Ages: 4-7+). It is designed to enhance children’s well-being across all dimensions – social, emotional, spiritual, physical and mental. Enhancing children’s well-being can lead to a wide variety of other successful outcomes including increased academic performance, better relationships and increased resilience. (Waters, 2011; Park & Peterson, 2008).
The programme is based on Positive Psychology, which is the science of well-being. It is designed to be implemented as part of the SPHE curriculum. The theme of the programme is that two small, gender-neutral aliens called Mo and Ko arrive from the planet called Zo to help children feel happy, strong, kind and brave, loving and well. Each week they introduce children to a new idea and they set a challenge for the children to try it out for the week – at home as well as at school. The characters Mo & Ko are gender-neutral – to order a gender-specific version, please click HERE.
The three levels in the programme are:
- Welcome to Well-Being: Book A: Meet Mo & Ko (Lower Primary – Junior Infants / Ages: 4-5)
- Welcome to Well-Being: Book B: Good to be Me with Mo & Ko (Lower Primary – Senior Infants / Ages: 5-6)
- Welcome to Well-Being: Book C: Feeling Good with Mo & Ko (Lower Primary – 1st Class / Ages: 6-7+)
Each level consists of:
- Teacher Resource Book (including a comprehensive Digital Companion Page containing PowerPoint of Lesson, Supplementary activities and more)
- Pupil Book (including activities for each lesson, homework activity and a pull-out parent/guardian/carer guide to encourage support and involvement at home)
- Poster Pack: 12 x A3 (45cm x 32cm) posters, printed on card and stored in a polythene sleeve for safekeeping. These are the same posters (but larger and printed on high-quality, silk-finish, 300 g/sm card) that are included in the back of the Teacher Resource Book and on the corresponding Digital Companion Page.
The Welcome to Well-Being FULL Starter Kit contains 6 books & 3 sets of Posters – one of each of the following:
- Welcome to Well-Being – Book A: Meet Mo & Ko (Lower Primary – Junior Infants / Ages: 4-5)
- Book A Teacher Resource Book
- Book A Pupil Book
- Book A Poster Pack
- Welcome to Well-Being – Book B: Good to Be Me with Mo & Ko (Lower Primary – Senior Infants / Ages: 5-6)
- Book B Teacher Resource Book
- Book B Pupil Book
- Book B Poster Pack
- Welcome to Well-Being – Book C: Feeling Good with Mo & Ko (Lower Primary – 1st Class / Ages: 6-7)
- Book C Teacher Resource Book
- Book C Pupil Book
- Book C Poster Pack
The Welcome to Well-Being BOOK Starter Kit contains one of each of the 6 Books only – no posters included.
You can LOOK INSIDE any of the books to see their content by visiting the Welcome to Well-Being Shop, selecting your desired class level and then choosing either the teacher book or pupil book option from the dropdown menu. The look inside feature will appear beneath the dropdown menu
Schools may order FREE SAMPLES of the Welcome to Well-Being Pupil books by clicking HERE.
You can try out a FREE LESSON from any of the three Welcome to Well-Being Levels (Junior Infants, Senior Infants and/or First Class) by clicking HERE.
About the Author:
Fiona Forman is an author, speaker, facilitator and trainer in the area of well-being and Positive Psychology. Having spent many years as a primary school teacher, she is absolutely passionate about placing well-being at the heart of school life and she has seen first-hand the great benefits of empowering children, teachers and parents to understand, value and enhance their own mental health. Fiona holds an M. Sc. in Applied Positive Psychology, the science of well-being, from the University of East London. She is the co-author of Weaving Well-Being, a positive mental health programme for primary school children (ages: 7-12) that is now in use in the majority of primary schools in Ireland as well as being licensed by Outside The Box Learning Resources to overseas educational publishers for use in the schools in their countries. Fiona has recently had her own well-being programme for secondary schools published. This is called Wired for Well-Being and is suitable for children aged 12-15. She has also had this Welcome to Well-Being programme published which is suitable for children aged 5 to 7+.
More information on the Welcome to Well-Being programme is available on the Welcome to Well-Being Homepage.
