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Benny’s December Update: the Yearly Round-up!

Hey friends, Benny here!

I am glad to be the bearer of good news that I am back with the December blog! As this is my last blog for 2020, I wanted to reflect on what I got busy with this year and do a round-up of 2020!

January

At the very start of the year, I outlined my New Year’s Resolutions for the year, one of which was to eat more healthily and exercise more! I am happy to announce that despite my love for Jaffa Cakes and indulging in a Victoria Sponge, I managed to add in some fruit and veg into my grizzly diet, and I fur-oughly enjoyed spending some time outside and moving about, especially in The Spires playground. Over Lockdown, exercising and eating healthily also helped with not feeling so stuffed – and definitely kept me paw-sitive.

February

In February I was bear-y excited to be taken on a trip to London by Katharine & Hannah from the Five Rivers Assessment and Therapy team, they took me to the Anna Freud Centre! The Anna Freud Centre is a charity that works to aid children’s and young people’s mental health and I learnt so much about their work with Five Rivers in ensuring that children and young people get the best support they need!

The trip was the bear-st, I took some photos in the underground station and outside the centre itself – it was a great day out!

On the 21st of February, I also took part in the Care Day celebrations! During Care Day, I enjoyed taking part in a special St John’s Ambulance led First Aid workshop, where I learnt the very important skill of saving someone’s life!

It was also really inspiring to see the young people who took part in the workshop last year to have been encouraged to become St John Cadets themselves and help others save lives too!

March

Benny World Book Day

March was a very busy month for me, I got involved in World Book Day and spent some time at The Spires!

For World Book Day, I took a trip to the library and showed off all my favourite books, some of which were The Gruffalo, The Northern Lights and the Dancing Bear!

Benny at the Spires

I also safely visited the children at The Spires and see how they got on with school during the lockdown, it was also great to play on the playground and enjoy the exercise in the spring sun, whilst also staying home whenever I could!

April

In April I shared some ideas on how you can have fun and spend the time indoors! I spent some time with a young person from Cornwall and helped him paint a beautiful rainbow window display, to thank the NHS for all their hard work during these hard times!

I also shared some tips on how to have fun indoors and while social distancing, some of which included having a movie night and getting creative while doing some arts and crafts!

May

Benny with cake

May was a very important and celebratory month for me as Foster Care Fortnight took place between the 11th and 24th of May! I celebrated and congratulated the amazing work that our incredible foster carers are doing, especially during these unprecedented times!

In May, I also joined The Spires in their VE Day celebrations – despite my New Year’s promise to eat healthier, I could not resist a tasty cake for their VE Day organised picnic, I do enjoy having a teddy bear’s picnic!

June

In June I participated in the annual Youth Council, that was taking place on Zoom this year!. The Youth Council is a democratic group run by children and young people who are fostered with Five Rivers – in the annual National Youth Council meeting they set out all the changes that they wish to see, as well as the projects that they intend to work in the next year or so. It was great to be invited and to see the children and young people getting involved and sharing their voice! I could bear-ly contain my excitement at joining the Zoom call!

July

In July I spent some time relaxing and having fun with some summer activities, such as playing sports and exercising, which helped me fulfill my new year’s resolution of doing more exercise!

August

In August I spent a lot of time baking and doing some arts and crafts – I was so inspired by the Weekly Art Projects sent in by the lovely people from the South and South East region – well done for their amazing work!

September

September was Back to School time for me, it was great to see all my friends from The Spires! I also had a little day trip to Brighton Beach and made some more friends with the local seagulls – even though the day was grey and rainy, and I played the part of a drizzly bear it didn’t stop me from having the bear-st time! I would have loved to have a teddy bear raincoat, like Paddington bear!

It was also mine and Five Rivers birthday month – I turned 1! I even had a birthday video made for me, thank you for all the birthday wishes!

October

Benny's October Blog

October was an exciting time for me and one of my favourite hobbies, listening to podcasts, as the Care to Listen? podcast came back for it’s third and fourth series that month! They were both very special series to celebrate both Sons and Daughters month and National Care Leavers Week, which were both taking place in October. The series was so interesting, and it was fantastic to hear from both sons and daughters of fostering families and care leavers too – make sure to listen to both of them!

November

I do love some self-care – you might as well call me a Self Care Bear! So for National Self Care Week that happened in November and to celebrate my love for self care, I shared my favourite self-care activities, which help me paws and unwind and take care of my mental and physical wellbeing too!

December

This month has been so busy across Five Rivers, with the annual Christmas Cards being sent out to all the fantastic foster carers and staff, as well as the festive season steadily approaching! The Christmas Card entries were just bear-illiant – I wish I’d done one now!

I was also invited down to Cornwall to join in with the 10 young people, nine carers and six Five Rivers staff members who walked just over 400 miles along the South West Coast Path from St Agnes to Penzance and Prussia Cove to Lizard Point! My feet were sore afterwards, but we raised over £460 and are working with Breadline to support local homeless people.

I can bearly wait for the festive season – make sure you keep an eye out on my special social media appearances on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, in which I will be exploring some Christmas traditions from home and abroad!

See you all in the new year, cannot wait to see what 2021 will bring and what adventures I will be getting up to!

Love,

Benny x

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