NASHVILLE, Tenn., - One in five children in America is living with a mental health condition and the COVID-19 pandemic has presented all children with new stresses and challenges. In response, GoNoodle has teamed up with On Our Sleeves®, the movement for children's mental health, to create and share social-emotional content for kids and tools and resources for teachers and parents across the country. GoNoodle will work with a team of pediatric mental health experts led by Dr. Parker Huston, Clinical Director of On Our Sleeves and pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital, to help parents and educators who are looking to more deeply connect with the kids in their lives and build bridges to positive conversations on mental health in a rapidly changing world.
Through this partnership, GoNoodle has launched a new channel on its platform, All the Feels. The All the Feels channel includes social-emotional learning videos for elementary-aged students. To recognize Mental Health Awareness Month this coming May, GoNoodle and On Our Sleeves will release a series of new social-emotional downloadable activities anchored by a new GoNoodle character. Each downloadable will be created for parents and teachers to use at home or in the classroom to help kids explore, understand, and communicate their feelings.
"In late January, we reached out to our parent and educator community asking them to submit anonymous questions on the problems they are dealing with right now. Within 24 hours we received nearly 300 questions, ranging from dealing with anxiety and stress to bullying and acting out at home and within the classroom," said KC Estenson, CEO of GoNoodle. "Parents and teachers are desperately seeking tools and resources to find the right answer on how to best help the children in their lives. We are coming together with On Our Sleeves to blend our expertise in movement and mindfulness content, with their expertise in positive children's mental health outcomes, to offer kids and grownups good energy content, tools, and resources that can further the conversation during the pandemic and beyond."
You can find Q&A blog posts with Dr. Parker Huston, answering the questions submitted by the GoNoodle community, on the GoNoodle blog. In his role with the On Our Sleeves movement, Dr. Huston develops, manages, and shares mental health content and advocates for children's mental health and wellness on a local, regional, and national level.
"This partnership with GoNoodle brings together two teams with complementary skills and missions," said Dr. Huston. "The opportunity to work with GoNoodle, which has so clearly developed an expertise for reaching children across the country, means that we can partner to bring positive messages about mental health and wellness directly to children and families everywhere. Then, we can provide extended learning modules to keep the conversation going in schools and homes as well."
The On Our Sleeves movement was launched on World Mental Health Day 2018, with a national mission to break the stigma surrounding children's mental health. On Our Sleeves' mission is to provide every community in America access to free, evidenced-informed, educational resources necessary for breaking stigmas about child mental health and educating families and advocates.
GoNoodle and On Our Sleeves will create two separate activity playbooks designed for students in grades K-2 and 3-5. GoNoodle will share On Our Sleeves resources with its parent and teacher communities through the Good Energy for Grownups blog, email, and social media throughout the multi-year partnership. Together, GoNoodle and On Our Sleeves will ensure that all content is relevant and age-appropriate for GoNoodle's audience.
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Parents can learn more about the On Our Sleeves movement and access free resources for children's mental health at OnOurSleeves.org.
About GoNoodle:
GoNoodle is a media and technology company with a suite of active engagement products for kids and the adults who love them. Created by social-emotional learning experts, GoNoodle is dedicated to empowering next-generation humans and helping the grown-ups who love them positively charge every day with Good Energy. Used in millions of homes and four-out-of-five U.S. public elementary schools, GoNoodle's interACTIVE content that can energize, focus, calm, or cheer up. To turn screen time into active time, convert any space to play space, and make every time the best time - there's a GoNoodle for that - visit http://www.gonoodle.com to get started. Headquartered everywhere kids are.
About On Our Sleeves®:
Children don't wear their thoughts on their sleeves. With 1 in 5 children living with a significant mental illness and half of all lifetime mental health issues starting by age 14, we need to give them a voice. On Our Sleeves, powered by behavioral health experts at Nationwide Children's Hospital, aims to provide every community in America with free resources necessary for breaking child mental health stigmas and educating families and advocates, because no child or family should struggle alone.
Since the inception of On Our Sleeves in 2018, more than 2 million people have interacted with our free pediatric mental health educational resources at OnOurSleeves.org and our educator curriculums have reached more than 1.1 million students across the United States. We depend on philanthropy to underwrite our mission of providing free educational resources across America and will be seeking funding partners to create a meaningful collaboration. Please contact Amanda Dove, Director of Corporate Partnerships at 1-866-317-5437 or amanda.dove@nationwidechildrens.org to learn how millions of families can learn about your brand.