A warm welcome back to school to everyone. We are really looking forward to celebrating with you all as we approach the end of term and have lots of great opportunities available to help make the next few months lots of fun.

Our recent holiday project was a great success with 40% of participants being new to our holiday offerings.

We took part in urban bug-hunts, pond dipping and nature trails. Next holiday we have 15 spaces available to partner schools running throughout the May/June Holiday.

Let us know if you have any young KS2 environmentalists who'd like to join.

We have been working with City Hall to source hard copies of London Trails for you to get out exploring and learning about our amazing city.

We will be running some ourselves which will be available for you to join in July if you do not feel confident in running your own.

If you haven't already expressed an interest please let us know if you'd like to take part.

As usual, in conjunction with our fun days, we are launching our annual raffle and opening it up to partner schools.

Prizes include but are not exclusive to: Hot air balloon ride for 2,Signed children's books, Formula One goodies, Slime kits, Afternoon tea and Amazon vouchers.

Coordinators can order blocks £1 tickets and then sell them on in their schools ,we will collect all tickets for the filmed draw and post the video result on 19th July.

Graduations are coming!

We have pre booked your celebration events so now we just need to check the hours and get everything allocated.

We have you all online now and have pre-allocated estimated hours for you.

Don't forget to use check sheets and passports to add on any additional hours you feel students are due.

Hello all of you from us at WCU,

Here we are at the holidays, we hope you enjoy our holiday offer and cannot wait to see what you all come up with in response to it.

Get Writing

We are getting ready to publish our first edition of our own WCU Magazine.

So if you have ever thought about writing and getting your name in print, now is the perfect time.

Write your own thoughts, advice or reflections on Wellbeing, Lock-down or Social Action and share with us via your school coordinator.

We will be collecting submissions up until June so we are really looking forward to reading your entries and seeing them in print.

Loved-Before

We have recently partnered with Loved Before. They are a great project all about rehoming pre-loved bears and toys. Each toy sent to Loved Before has their own pre-loved story and is given up for adoption so they can be loved again. We think this is a great way of saving our lovely furry pals from going to waste!

We'd like you to draw your best furry pal and tell us their story -A picture or drawing of you and them would be great! We will put all entries on our WCU site and there will be prizes for the winners.

You can also collect and donate your own bears for rehousing via your school coordinator so let us know if you are interested in this also.

TFL Craft Club

How about some art and local walk during the holidays? TFL have a whole range of walks and activities for you to do. TFL have teamed up with their friends at the conservation organisation, Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and walking app Go (Jauntlyhttps://www.gojauntly.com/walks-near-me), to bring you their TfL Craft Club nature special. There is also their “Explore London blog” for the full pack and highlights including walking tips and challenges, word search fun, how to build a bird feeder, a bug hotel and a guided mindful walk too. You can access the holiday pack at https://www.westminsterchildrensuniversity.co.uk/tfl/.

Canal Cavalcade Digital Art Project

Are you a budding artist?

Our friends at the Canal and Waterways Association are looking for submissions of artwork to digitally share during the May Cavalcade.

Your work can be in any medium or even digitally produced.

The theme for submission is -Our wonderful waterways-London's Canals.

Future Solutions Design Project

Have you got a great idea for improving technology in the future? If so this competition is for you! We are looking for students who can design and explain their ideas for the future using technology to improve our world. There will prizes of Renault Formula One Caps and bags for students in each participating school.

For inspiration there are entries already online at https://www.westminsterchildrensuniversity.co.uk/future-solutions/.

Get Exploring Online

There is a full range of information available from us online You will see in our tabs there is access to: news, dates, updates about us, partner school profiles, partner details and in the for Parents and Children Tab everything you will need to take part in a wide range of online projects.

You can find us at https://www.westminsterchildrensuniversity.co.uk

There is a wealth of information and activity to access and take part in.

All of it is completely free of charge and without the need to register, login in or commit.

If you were a Unicorn…

We love creativity and fantasy creatures at WCU, thanks to our partners we have some great unicorn themed prizes to give away.

Simply draw yourself as a unicorn on A4 paper or card and submit to your WCU coordinator. What about the design makes your Unicorn unique and all about you?

We will select an overall winner to receive our Unicorn themed goody bundle. We will announce winners in June. You can see entries for inspiration at https://www.westminsterchildrensuniversity.co.uk/art-fun/

Start Journaling

Big Life Journal offers science-based journals for kids to help them grow their confidence and resilience. They've created growth mind-set journals and bundles for different ages, from young children to teens. Big Life journals feature engaging activities, inspiring stories, and colourful illustrations meant to wire kids' brains for resilience, gratitude, and self-love.

Go over to https://www.westminsterchildrensuniversity.co.uk/big-life-journal/ to get started.

RAK Challenge

Take action and carry out a random act of kindness for someone else. Research shows that helping others can be beneficial to our own mental health. It can reduce stress, improve our emotional wellbeing and even benefit our physical health .You can share back what you’ve done through your coordinator and we will share it in our next newsletter. There are resources and ideas available with us at https://www.westminsterchildrensuniversity.co.uk/rak/

 Good for the body. Kindness has been shown to increase self-esteem, empathy and compassion, and improve mood. ... Kindness can increase your sense of connectivity with others, which can directly impact loneliness, improve low mood and enhance relationships in general. It also can be contagious.

A Quick Update

We have scheduled weekly check-in sessions for any needs or admin as they arise and monthly leads' meetings, to plan directly with us what you would like to see and do with us at WCU. These zoom meets will commence in May and we are looking forward to negotiating the best time for you to access this additional support.

We will coordinate access to well-being and support structures initiated by ourselves and partners.

We have additional resources available to educators and opportunities for individual schools to access online streaming.

We hope you find these resources of interest and have many more waiting for you!

Coming Soon

We are currently sourcing activities and resources to make your graduations a real celebration of your achievements this year. We will deliver these in person, on the day of your choosing.

Additionally, we have coordinated a choice between onsite and alternative venue options, ensuring we can deliver consistently and safely regardless of each schools' needs and preferences.

There will be Boxing and CBT sessions for schools with 1-2 classes graduating. Circus Skill days for larger Cohorts. Attendance at our fun day for our most local partners will be available too.

 You can always connect with WCU Manager, Stella Wilson for  

  further details email: swilson@queensparkschool.co.uk, 

How joyful for us to be back out in the community last week and to visit Paddington Central and our friends at British Land. We are working with them to promote social action and community gardening with the Foursquare Farms. It was so enjoyable to get out together and walk along the local waterways again, we were so hyped to be out together doing our projects again. Obviously, we had to have a much smaller group and we couldn’t use public transport but part of the beauty of where we are means that we can travel lots of places by foot.

 Many of us will be coming together during the holidays to safely take part in some exciting new projects involving forest school, cycling proficiency, arts awards and mentoring. We are looking forward to making sure the children from other schools can take part with us in the future and can’t wait to see what the next holiday will bring.

Hannah and I have been super-hyped to be launching our very own bug hang out where we wish to promote and celebrate the joy of keeping invertebrates. Our first big un-boxing happened and we have made the video for that which we will be having online for you very soon. You can check out some of our fan-art that is already in place here on the WCU site and we are looking forward to much more coming our way so that we can share it together! We have promised a handling video next so look out for that in the near future.

We love to have a competition at Westminster Children’s University and there are currently two open for students to take part in. We would like you to design a unicorn that sums you up as a person; if you were a unicorn what would you look like? We can’t wait to see what you come up. Also we are inviting students to come up with innovations for the future; can you think of something that would use technology to make the future a little bit better for everybody else? Maybe you want to protect something that’s endangered or perhaps a new way of fuelling cars? Whatever you think would be the best way of moving forward, we would love to hear your ideas. There will be prizes for the best entries in both cases and we are really looking forward to making more videos of your work so that we can put it online for you all to share.

Next term we are going to be putting on an art exhibition of our very own and we would like donations of art from all of you guys, so please get creating! You can pick your own theme and you your own media as we are happy for you to express yourself in whichever way suits you best. We all are really looking forward to what you come up with as are our friends at Paddington Central  who are kindly going to give us access to exhibition space .We are hoping to have a launch-night type event as well which will be amazing fun for you and your parents and a great way of us all getting together.

 Another way you might like to contribute is to write together another way you might like to contribute to a larger public project is to write a submission for our WCU Wellbeing magazine which we are going to publish before the end of term. We are looking for poetry, well-being and health advice and reflections from you guys to share amongst the wider community.

We would like to shout out the young film-makers who won the Bank of England Covid-Film-project, congratulations to you and your great director/producer Miss C. That’s not all, a second film is already underway, can’t wait to see it!