by Kelly Watson Moss and Kelly Morris O’Neill.
This is part four.
- Why You Should Try a Wellnes Day: Disconnecting to Reconnect
- How to Build a Community-Wide Wellness Day
- Connecting Community: Establishing Lasting Relationships with Students, Staff, and Community Members
The secret to a successful Wellness Day isn’t just offering a variety of workshops (but it helps!), it’s creating workshops that are engaging, so that activity becomes part of an experience and then a memory. As Kevin Fisher, colleague and workshop presenter, states, “I love participating in and volunteering for Wellness Day! Best day of the year at our school….This is the kind of stuff kids remember 10-20 years later when they look back on middle school-for many, the hardest years of their lives! Wellness Day is definitely a highlight!”
We hope that students create core memories from their experiences; we also hope that they choose activities that connect to their overall well-being and consider one of the eight dimensions of wellness that will help them take care of their needs now and down the road. It is also important to keep in mind the 8 areas of wellness. Finding workshops that span multiple areas of wellness and having multiple workshops for each area is essential for a successful day.
Here are several activities that students and staff alike absolutely love! Beyond promoting one or more of the eight dimensions of wellness, they foster community through teamwork, curiosity, confidence, and connection to others. Most importantly, they are fun. When learning and wellness combine for enjoyment, the lessons learned last beyond the day.
Activity One: Animals!
Yes, that is correct, animals! Anytime you can get someone to come in with animals, it’s a workshop that is sure to fill up and fill up fast! What kind of animals? It really doesn’t matter! Local shelters are a great place to start - they are often eager to bring in their animals of all sizes and kinds. From guinea pigs to rats and bunnies, students love the chance to interact with them, learn about how to care for shelter animals, and make some awesome toys - activities that engage intellectual wellness through hands-on learning.
Another benefit to including animal interactions is that it is known to lower stress and create a calming atmosphere. Even students who may be hesitant at first usually warm up. Building comfort with animals fosters emotional confidence.
Just as shelter animals support emotional wellness, service animals bring another dimension to the experience. Each year, our custodian brings in his service dog and runs a hands-on experience focusing on service dog training, animal care responsibilities, and the science behind why animals support human well-being. This workshop is a great example of social wellness - students are familiar with this community member in a completely different role, building connections and understanding the many ways people contribute to our school community.
The key is to start local. Do you have rescue leagues near you? Try those too!
Farms nearby? Check in with them about their chicks or baby goats, and anything they might be able to bring in. When you bring animals into your Health & Wellness Day, you’re not just creating a memorable experience - you’re building social connections, sparking intellectual curiosity, and nurturing emotional comfort.
Activity Two: Child’s Play
Another type of experience students flock to is one that lets them step out of the middle school pressure cooker. Students love to be kids, especially middle schoolers who are in this funky middle part of life, where they are not adults but also not children, just tweening it up. One of our colleagues, an English teacher, brings them back in time with a workshop that helps them reconnect with the joy, creativity, and wonder of childhood, perfectly titled “Child’s Play”. For an hour, students engage with their peers in hands-on activities like finger painting, sidewalk chalk art, blowing bubbles, creating with Play-Doh, building, coloring, and other playful experiences that allow them to slow down, laugh, get a little dirty, and simply enjoy the moment. These nostalgic activities hit multiple wellness areas at once - emotional wellness through stress relief, social wellness through shared play and laughter, and intellectual wellness through creative expression.
As middle educators, we know most students need permission to be kids again, and this workshop gives them that. It provides a much-needed break and reminds students that play isn't just for young children; it’s an important part of healthy development at every age.
Setting up this workshop is simple. Look through your closets at home and school. Pull out those old costumes, refill those half bottles of bubbles, go to the local dollar store and stock up on chalk, ask families to donate coloring books and crayons. When you bring in playful experiences to your Health and Wellness Day, you’re permitting students to be young again - to laugh again - to be themselves again.
Activity Three: Food!
One way to get students excited to learn is to add food! Cooking, making healthy snacks, or making small meals for a community fridge or shelter is a great way to learn about the importance of nutrition, balance, and giving back.
For the past few years, our local eatery Lexie’s has helped run our Feed the Fridge workshop. Together, our students and the community members make lunches to fill our local food pantry and fridge. They pack the lunch bags with nutritional food and decorate them with words of inspiration. Students who might not interact on a regular basis find themselves working side by side, packing lunches and chatting up their day. Each year, the workshop fills the fridge with over 100 lunches. This workshop supports social wellness through collaboration, emotional wellness through giving back, and intellectual wellness through learning about nutrition.
We have also partnered with the dietitian at Hannaford and our Family and Consumer Science teacher Hannah, who helps students discover that healthy eating is simple and fun. During these workshops, students learn about the importance of reading labels, balanced nutrition, identifying healthier alternatives to sugary snacks and processed foods, as well as how the foods they choose affect their energy, focus, mood, and overall well-being. Students walk away from these workshops with simple recipes and more awareness about making informed food choices, which directly connects to their overall wellness. When students leave these workshops, they don’t just take home recipes— they take home a deeper understanding of how food choices shape their overall wellness.
Activity Four: Anything Outside and Physical
By far the most popular workshop offerings involve physical wellness activities that promote physical well-being. Both staff and community members offer a variety of physical wellness workshops for our students to participate in, ranging from walking to football and cheer clinics to learn to play pickleball. If we offer it, it will fill up.
We are also fortunate to have a university close to our campus, so reaching out to their athletic departments provides a great opportunity to involve college students in our day. Each year, the football and soccer programs have benefited from providing community service opportunities for their players, and our students have benefited from the mentorship of college athletes running them through drills and skills. Pickleball, which is sweeping the nation, is also a popular activity we offer on Wellness Day. Our local pickleball club volunteers their time and provides court tips to beginners and seasoned players alike.
While competitive athletic options like cheer, football, soccer, and lacrosse are popular, a simple and needed activity for students to connect with their peers is Walk and Talk. This activity is just what our social kids love, and it gets them moving. Students often do not have time in their school day to chat with their friends other than at lunch; this activity provides just that. This workshop offers a perfect time to move and connect with their peers. It is the perfect combination of social, emotional, and physical wellness. Hold the workshop outside, and now you have connected environmental wellness as well. Two of our colleagues-an English teacher and a math teacher-run this workshop. Last year a student was excited to make a new friend who shared an interest in Dungeons and Dragons during the workshop.
More Than Just a Day: An Experience
In the end, designing a Wellness Day is much more than taking a break from computer use and the day-to-day of regular school and academics. It is about creating authentic opportunities for students to discover new interests, build and strengthen relationships, learn to care for themselves and others, and enjoy what it means to be fully present. Whether it is laughing about being in the kitchen too long in pickleball, cuddling up to a shelter animal, making some lunches for the community, taking a walk back in time to be little kids again, or simply walking around with a friend, students are learning and building skills that extend beyond the day.
As educators, we hope our students will remember our lessons, but it isn’t the lesson they remember; it’s how they experienced the lesson- were they challenged, inspired, heard? Those moments are curated through shared experiences and collaboration. Wellness Day creates these moments and reminds us that investing in all areas of student wellness is not extra, but necessary. It is essential for helping students thrive inside and outside of the classroom.
