Promoting fairness and inclusion, the KNOWING KIDS BASICS programme supports the four capacities at the heart of the Curriculum for Excellence, addressing specific outcomes in the subject areas of Health & Wellbeing, Literacy & English and the Expressive Arts.

Participants will have an opportunity to:

- learn relaxation skills,

- increase self-awareness, and,

- improve creative writing.

The KNOWING KIDS BASICS programme gives teachers the following two options:

This option includes two workshops during the course of one day (one class per workshop). Each session is based on 'THE BREATHING GAME', an exciting, whole-class activity around a giant board where the children learn to recognise the link between breathing patterns and their thoughts and feelings.

This option includes the two workshops offered within Option 1 during the course of one day as part of a four-step programme for up to two classes. Teacher manuals, worksheets and support will be provided.

"The Bizzikid's workshop was a great success! My class are a real bunch of characters and they were engaged within minutes. The game was fun, exciting and very educational and we plan to adapt it and use it in class for different curricular areas. This workshop game my class the opportunity to develop their own understanding as well as team-building skills. TWO THUMBS UP!"

P5 Teacher, Alehousewells School, Aberdeenshire

“As well as helping children develop healthy self-awareness in a fun way, working with the ‘Knowing Kids Basics’ programme had a lot of additional benefits.
The breathing exercises are great for focussing the mind before an important task or personal challenge, while the Mind Picture activities had the very welcome impact of improving writing with one group of reluctant boys.
The Perseverance activity requires the class to imagine a ball.  For many of the children, there was a natural transition where the ball was replaced by a specific aim or goal.
Best of all, the children are demonstrably increasingly confident and comfortable with identifying and talking about feelings. We are certainly going to continue to build on this in P7.”

Karen Pratsides
P6 Teacher (2008/2009), Heathryburn School, Aberdeen

"It was super because we learned to calm ourselves down."

"Superb because everyone was working as a team."

"I enjoyed it because we learned how to breathe properly."

"Fantastic because we learned the word diaphragm."

"It was ace."

"I was proud of myself because I worked in a group."