Inside My Brain

This would make a nice start-of-term activity, or you could use it in a Learning mentor session or a Nurture Group to get to know your pupils.

Preparation: print out a large outline of a brain for each child, together with a patterned colouring-in page.

Explain they're going to fill their brains with words that describe what's important to them - family members and friends, special places, pets, foods, pastimes. They should aim not to leave many gaps, so if they run out of ideas they can put a word twice or even more. They could vary the size of the words to signify the relative importance or they could write the words in a variety of colours. 

Then they stick the brain onto the patterned paper and colour in around it.

This was a very relaxing session that could have lasted over an hour but we ran out of time. The children are taking their work home to finish and I've asked them to bring them back next week to share (if they want to).