Thrive

Our Thrive Practitioner and Family Thrive Lead is Mrs S. Coupe.

What is Thrive?

The Thrive Approach is a dynamic developmental approach to working with children and young people that supports their emotional and social wellbeing as the foundation to improve learning.

The Thrive Approach is based on four areas of research: neuroscience, attachment, child development and creative play. Thrive was developed in 1994 by a multiagency team of teacher, former Ofsted inspectors, social workers and therapists.

Thrive in school

• At Nettleworth Infant School and Nursery we provide a Whole School Thrive Approach; all children will benefit from Thrive.

• We use the online Thrive Approach toolkit to profile every class. This not only highlights any children who may need more intense support but also indicates how the class are developing and feeling as a whole, enabling the teacher to deliver specific activities to support children in the moment.

• Our license practitioner is then able to deliver more specialised and intense support to those children who need this. Support may be offered through small group or 1:1 work and may be delivered for a short period of time or to support longer term.

What does Thrive look like in practice?

• Thrive in practice incorporates building strong, safe relationships with the child and using creative (and often messy!) play to explore sensations and emotions and to learn to self-regulate. This will often involve having no expectations/outcomes for an activity, developing language and linking body sensation to emotion and enabling a child to communicate through play.

• We use paint, sand, water, puppets, shaving foam, glitter, music, drama, dance, nature, baking, junk modelling, story telling, trust games, hide and seek, scavenger hunts, board games, small world play, feathers, hand cream and even tea bags!

Why is Emotional wellbeing and resilience so important?

We all want our children to be happy and we all want them to have the best experiences in life. However, we all known life is full of bumps and turns and our children need strong resilience and understanding of their emotional needs to continue to thrive throughout their lives.

The importance of Mental Health and wellbeing has been highlighted in the news and social media in recent years – especially during the pandemic.
Children with little or no emotional regulation or resilience are unable to engage in learning thus not developing other important skills and knowledge.
Developing emotional wellbeing supports children to develop other skills in communication, sharing, turn taking, participation and patience as well as creating emotional awareness and empathy.

Are you interested in using a Thrive approach at home?

FAO Mrs S. Coupe or Mrs S. Lee

Additional support can be found at Thrive online for parents and carers

https://www.thriveapproach.com/who-we-work-with/parents-carers/