The Amazing A-Z of Resilience. David Gumbrell

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      Resilience is about recognising when things are not right and doing something about it (rather than pretending that it is not happening). Instead of hiding, we need to seek help when we are struggling, or try to figure it out for ourselves. Life can be tricky at times, but we need to deal with things when they come up.

      Although the chapters are linked by the theme of resilience, they do not follow from A to B to C…so feel free to dip in and read a chapter, take time to think about what it is saying, try the art activity and then move on to another letter, another day.

      The Amazing A–Z of Resilience is also a book to be shared. You can read it with a friend, a parent, a grandparent, or in class with your teacher. A walk in the countryside is more fun if you are with other people. Similarly, this journey is good if you can share it with others.

      And why are there so many Zs in the title of the final chapter? The reason is that our sleep is SO important. It really helps us to rest and recover and to be more resilient. You can read more about this in the chapter ‘ZZZ is for Sleep’, but if you do just one thing better – get some sleep!

      We also need to look after ourselves better. Resilience is about caring for yourself and being compassionate to

      yourself, being as kind to yourself as you are to your friends and family. This means exercising, having a hobby, eating well and, yes, you’ve got it, getting a good night’s sleep.

      Along your journey you are going to meet Paddington Bear, a Canadian dinosaur called a Xenoceratops and a Roman god called Vulcan. You are going to learn about an amazing kite flier, pirates’ treasure and which toys were taken to the International Space Station by the Discovery astronauts so that they could experiment with them. But most importantly, I want you to learn more about you!

      This book, you see, is all about YOU, really. It is a guidebook for YOUR journey, not mine. Along the way, each new character can teach you something about YOU!

      So sit back, relax and enjoy this excursion. Luckily, there will be an ice-cream stop somewhere on the way (depending on which route you take).

      Do you love alphabetti spaghetti on toast, spelling out your name with the pasta letters in front of you? There are never enough of some letters, like Js, so you have to dig around to find them! Sometimes there aren’t any of a letter you need, and you have to do something like turn an ‘L’ round the other way to make it look like a ‘J’, or put a short bit of spaghetti over an ‘O’ to make a ‘Q’!

      There are around 90 letters in each small tin, and therefore you can make a LOT of different words if you can unscramble the tomato-sauced letters. It’s a bit like an anagram, isn’t it? Muddled-up letters, rearranged to make a word.

      Can you find a number within the word SPAGHETTI?

      You’ve got the T and E for TEN, but not the N. How about other numbers?

      Just stopping for a moment to think through how to unravel these letters is a good thing. You need to give yourself time to think things through before you come up with a solution. Not everything that is worth solving can be done immediately.

      But challenging problems come with more rewarding solutions!

      Alternatively, you can grab a piece of paper and start writing your thoughts down to start to organise them. If you can see your thoughts with your own eyes, then you can build on them to find that solution. If your thoughts still seem like unorganised spaghetti, then you can ask others for help, of course.

      Have you got the anagram yet? (The answer is EIGHT!)

      Why Not Try This?

      Use an orange pencil to write down two tricky things that you are thinking about at the moment.

      Put an arrow by each and then write next to them the first thing you could do to make them feel less tricky.

      Did you know that helium balloons are not just for birthdays? They are used to tell us about the weather too. Without weights attached to their ribbons, helium balloons will continue to rise and rise. If indoors, this means they float to the ceiling; if outside, it means up and up into the sky!

      Up, up and up – in fact, so high that they pass birds and aeroplanes, through the clouds and about halfway to the edge of space! Weather balloons are very big, even on the ground, and get bigger as they rise! Eventually, they burst and anything that they were lifting falls back down to Earth. All the weather recording equipment does too, and therefore it has to be attached to a parachute for its downward journey!

      On good days, you can feel like a buoyant balloon. The day is going to be great; you can’t wait to get going, this is your moment, you have been waiting weeks for this. If you don’t hold yourself back, you are going to keep rising and rising.

      On other days, you might have something that is weighing you down. It might be a worrying thought, a concern about a piece of school work, or a friendship issue in the playground. You can feel a bit deflated, more like a balloon a week after the party.

      Either way, it’s OK. Sometimes you will feel СКАЧАТЬ