Basecamp Spotlight

Welcome to Spotlight!

Our youngest service users attend our Basecamp sessions, which run weekly during after school hours. The aim of these sessions is to provide a fun, safe environment for the children to socialise, make friends, and learn vital skills.

Each week’s activities revolve around a different children’s book, which in turn helps us to begin to discuss the topics and themes which are central to the service.

This week, our book was The Worrysaurus, by Rachel Bright. This is a wonderful story about a little dinosaur who is learning to manage his butterfly of worry that starts in his tummy. The activities planned for the evening were chosen to encourage mindfulness, and to help each child to develop their own skills and strategies which will help them to manage emotions that can, at first, seem very difficult to control.

To begin, we hid coloured butterflies all around our venue. It was up to the children to work together as a team to find them all and arrange them into one, big, beautiful butterfly.

 We also set up a playdough challenge table, where the children could share all of the different colours and tools to create something to show off and take home. It’s not always easy to wait for your favourite colour, but the group did some brilliant sharing and turn-taking. By the end, we had made medals, lollipops, fish and much more!

 Later in the session we all tried some Yoga together, which can be particularly helpful when we need a little bit of time and space to take some deep breaths and settle ourselves.

And that concludes our glimpse into a day in the life at Basecamp, group 1. How do you deal with the butterflies in your tummy? Did you see any activities that you might like to try at home?

We all experience worries and anxiety in our daily lives, but with a little help and practice, we can learn to understand these feelings and even turn them into a positive presence in our lives.