15th October Global Handwashing Day

One of the most effective ways to stop the spread of germs and stay healthy is also one of the simplest — handwashing with soap and water. Keeping hands clean can prevent 1 in 3 diarrheal illnesses and 1 in 5 respiratory infections, such as a cold or the flu.

Each year on October 15, Global Handwashing Day highlights the importance of handwashing with soap and water at home, in the community, and around the world.

This year, the Global Handwashing Day theme focuses on the links between handwashing and food including food hygiene and nutrition. Handwashing is an important part of keeping food safe, preventing diseases, and helping children grow strong. Our tagline, Clean hands a recipe for health, reminds us to make handwashing a part of every meal.

Collect all the books together about, hands, washing, soap to remind yourself and the students we should still be pursuing hand washing as a worthwhile endeavour in the fight against illness.

Find: (but there's more here)

8th October Love Your Bookshop Day

Love Your Bookshop Day 2022 (#LYBD2022) is an annual celebration of everything local bookshops do from fostering expert staff and curating fabulous ranges to creating events programs to celebrate authors, readers, and the books they cherish. 

We do need to support our local bookshops because the thought of not being able to browse new books before buying or ordering scares me. I love bookshops, even if I usually only look in the children's section. There are so many adult novels set in bookshops. Think 84 Charing Cross Road; The Little Paris Bookshop; The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. That made me wonder about how many children's books were set in a bookshop.

Well there are some:

•  Maisie Goes to the Bookshop by Lucy Cousins

• The Bookshop Cat by Cindy Wume

• Franklin's Flying Bookshop by Jen Campbell and Katie Harnett

• The Little Bookshop and Origami Army by Michael Foreman

• Dog Loves Books by Louise Yates

• Good Night Little Bookstore by Amy Cherrix and E. B Goodale

• The Magic Bookshop  by Natalie Jane Prior and Cheryl Orsini

• Jasper and Scruff: Hunt for the Golden Bone by Nicola Colten

• The Missing Bookshop by Katie Clapham and Kirsti Beautyman

• The Magical Bookshop by Katja Frixe

• The Travelling Bookshop by Katrina Nannestad and Cheryl Orsini

This is a series of three, soon to be four books about Mim Cohen who roams the world in a travelling bookshop, with her dad, brother and a horse called Flossy.

• The Bookshop Girl by Sylvia Bishop and Ashley King

This story is about a little girl named Property Jones, so-called because she was left in the lost property cupboard of a bookshop when she was five years old.

• Pages and Co by Anna James

This too, is a series of books about eleven year old Tilly who lives with her grandparents above their bookshop.Tilly loves escaping into the pages of her favourite stories.

• Sylvia's Bookshop by Robert Burleigh and Katy Wu

Told by the bookstore itself, Sylvia's Bookshop tells the story of the legendary Shakespeare and Company, its owner Sylvia Beach, and the many great writers who gathered there to meet, read, and remind us that books are more than the words on the page.

and coming soon 

• The Bookshop Mice by Robert Starling.

      

13th October World Sight Day

World Sight Day is observed every year on the second Thursday of October, falling on October 13th this year. It was initiated by the Lions Clubs International Foundation during their ‘SightFirstCampaign’ in an effort to spread awareness about preventable blindness and to help people who are visually impaired. 

It’s an international event that provides an opportunity to focus the world’s attention on the importance of good eye health and vision care. This year's World Sight Day will focus on the #LoveYourEyes campaign which aims for 5 million sight tests to be pledged during the month leading up to World Sight Day. 

#LoveYourEyes is about creating awareness that everyone, at some stage in life, will experience an eye health issue. Those of us who can access eye care should prioritise our eye health and support efforts to ensure that everyone enjoys the same access.  

This is a 'big' day, encompassing so many things. Just what do I look for book-wise?

I've divided it up...

1. Eyes. In the section of books about the body we have a few with details about eyes.

• The Eyes by Lorna Hendry

• Little Genius: Eyes  by Kate Lennard and Elvind Gulliksen

• Eye to Eye: How Animals See the World  by Steve Jenkins

• Eye: How it Works by David MacAuley

2. Sight, one of our senses. There used to be a large number of books in our library about the senses because it was a topic preschoolers and kindergarten used to explore. We had separate books on each of the senses, sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste. We now have only two, these

• Sight  by Mandy Suhr and  Mike Gordon

• Seeing by Kimberley Jane Prior

3. Blindness and being blind. There are stories that will help children 'feel' what it means to be blind. Look for these:

• Mole's Sunrise  by Jeanne Willis and Sarah Fox-Davies

• Dan and Diesel by Charlotte Hudson and Lindsey Gardiner

• Looking Out for Sarah  by Glenna Lang

• Lucy's Picture  by Nicola Moon and Alex Ayliffe

• My Three Best Friends and Me, Zulay by Cari Best and Vanessa Brantley-Newton

• Yuko-Chan and the Drama Doll: the Adventures of a Blind Girl Who Saves her Village by Sunny Seki

• The Black Book of Colours by Menina Cottin and Rosana Faria

• The Seeing Stick  by Jane Yolen and Daniela Terrazzini

• Footsteps Through the Fog  by Margaret Mary and Gavin Bishop

• The Sound of Colors by Jimmy Liao

• My City Speaks by Darren LeBeuf and Ashley Barron

       

4. Going for an Eye Test

• Topsy and Tim: Have their Eyes Tested by Jean Adamson

• Peppa Pig: Peppa's First Glasses 

• Optometrists and What they Do  by Liesbet Slegers

• I Really Absolutely Have to Have Glasses by Lauren Child

        

5. Wearing glasses (spectacles)

• Arthur's Eyes  by Marc Brown

• Specs for Rex by Yasmeen Ismail

• Ava's Spectacular Spectacles by Alex Rex and Angela Perrini

• Princess Peepers by Pam Calvert and Tuesday Mourning

• Eureka! Glasses by Lori Haskins Houran and John Jovan

• Calvin, Look Out! by Jennifer Berne and Keith Bendis

        

6. Eye interventions (including amblyopia, double vision and lazy eye)

• The Patch by Justina Chen Headley and Mitch Vane

• Jacob's Eye Patch  by  Beth Kobliner Shaw and Jacob Shaw and Jules Feiffer

• The Pirate of Kindergarten by George Ella Lyon and Lynne Avril

• My Travellin' Eye by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw

  

7. Braille (includes books about Braille and books that include Braille)

• Private and Confidential  by Marion Ripley and Colin Blackhouse

• Off to the Park! by Stephen Cheetham

8. Biographies of people who have had an impact on sight interventions

• Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille by Jen Bryant and Boris Kulikov

• Helen Keller  by Kitson Jazynka

• Helen Keller by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

• The Flying Optometrist by Joanne Anderson and Karen Erasmus

• The Doctor with an Eye for Eyes: The Story of Dr Patricia Bath by Julia Finley Mosca and Daniel Rieley

• Stevie Wonder  by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

• The Amazing Bike Ride by Lorin Nicholson and David Emerson

• Keep Your Ear on the Ball by Genevieve Petrillo and Lea Lyon

 

10th October World Mental Health Day

Make mental health & well-being for all a global priority. 

Every year in October, around the time of World Mental Health day on the 10th, people all over the world celebrate Mental Health Week. Mental Health Awareness Week is held annually in the second week of October. This year, Mental Health Awareness Week 2022 will be held from 10th-16th October.

We know that lockdowns have had an effect on the mental wellbeing of children. In December 2020, research showed that more than four in ten parents had seen their children display behaviours that suggested heightened anxiety since the outbreak of Covid-19.

Almost half of the 1,000 parents of four- to twelve-year-olds who took part in the survey in Britain said they felt that the pandemic had also “negatively impacted” on their children’s friendships.

This has given rise to issues such as stress, fear, anxiety, depression, adjustment issues, apprehensions towards the future, surfacing of the previous and past undiagnosed and untreated mental health disorders, fear, phobia, and obsessions of contamination, fear of physical interactions, fear of uncertainty leading to helplessness. 

Schools can provide supportive platforms for children to share and talk about their feelings and fears to mental health professionals. They can render massive help by emphasising the importance of speaking out when disturbed or confused. This will help prevent and manage a lot of mental health issues that children could be facing. I work at a school that takes the wellbeing of the students very seriously. Class time is allocated regularly for Circle Time, Wellbeing sessions and wellbeing is always a focus at assemblies. 

What is good mental health? 

It is when we can cope with the stressors of our daily lives, participate in loving relationships, contribute to our community, and work towards our goals. So everyone has mental health, even children.

How many children have mental illness?

In 2013–14, an estimated 314,000 children aged 4–11 (almost 14%) experienced a mental disorder in the 12 months before the survey (Lawrence et al. 2015). Boys were more commonly affected than girls (17% compared with 11%).

ADHD was the most common disorder for children (8.2%), and the most common among boys (11%).

Anxiety disorders were the second most common disorders among all children (6.9%), and the most common among girls (6.1%).

More recent data, that factors in the pandemic, will probably show higher figures.

Teachers at my school frequently ask for books to support their Social and Emotional Programs, so there are shelves in the nonfiction section that now have many more books than they did in the past. There are books about feelings and emotions, books about neurodiversity,  mindfulness, tolerance, resilience, growth mindset and general wellbeing.

   

Start with What's in Your Mind Today? by Louise Bladen 

Then, the  most borrowed books about feelings are:

• In My Heart: A Book of Feelings  by Jo Witek and Christine Roussey

• The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas

• Feelings by Libby Walden and Richard Jones

• The Boy With Big Big Feelings by Britney Winn Lee and Jacob Souva

• Visiting Feelings by Lauren Rubenstein and Shelly Hehenberger

• How Are You Feeling Today? by Molly Potter and Sarah Jennings

• Big Feelings by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufmann

About worries and anxiety:

• Ruby's Worry by Tom Percival 

• The Worrying Worries  by Rachel Rooney and Zahra Hicks

• Jeremy Worried About the Wind  by Pamela Butchart and Kate Hindley

• Jack's Worry by Sam Zuppardi

• What's Worrying You? by Molly Potter and Sarah Jennings

• Brave Every Day  by Trudy Ludwig and Patrice Barton

• When You Are Brave by Pat Zietlow Miller and Eliza Wheeler

Other general titles:

• What's Going on in my Head? by Molly Potter and Sarah Jennings

• The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig and Patrice Barton

• Tomorrow I'll Be Brave  by Jessica Hische

• Brave by Stacey McAnulty and Joanne Lew-Vriethoff

• When Sadness Comes to Call by Eva Eland

• Mr Huff  by Anna Walker

• A World of Pausibilities  by Frank J. Sileo and Jennifer Zivoin

Of course there are many more books than this.

See here for more books on worries and anxiety.

See here for books on mindfulness.