Mindful Moments: Story-Led Character Strengths Wellbeing for Kids

Character strengths are the core positive qualities within every child and adult — things like creativity, kindness, perseverance, teamwork, leadership, curiosity, and gratitude. They’re the parts of our personality that shape how we think, feel and behave in everyday situations.

Character strengths are central to positive education, a strengths-based approach that focuses on what helps young people thrive socially, emotionally, and academically. Research in the VIA Character Strengths framework shows that when students learn to recognise and use their strengths, their confidence, wellbeing, resilience and engagement in learning all increase.

Character strengths give teachers a simple, evidence-based way to build wellbeing and emotional literacy across primary and secondary school settings.

Teaching character strengths helps students understand who they are and how they can use their strengths to learn, solve problems and build healthy relationships. This strengths-based approach reduces anxiety, improves behaviour, and boosts motivation and engagement.

In positive education, wellbeing and learning support each other. Character strengths give teachers and students a shared language for emotional awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and resilience. When classrooms focus on what’s “strong” rather than what’s “wrong,” students feel valued, supported and ready to grow.

Character strengths integrate seamlessly with the Australian Curriculum and are highly relevant to classroom practice. They connect strongly to the Personal and Social Capability, Critical and Creative Thinking, and Ethical Understanding general capabilities.

Teachers can use Character Strengths in:

• Health and Physical Education (HPE): wellbeing, emotional regulation, relationships

• The Arts: creativity, curiosity, perseverance

• English: reflection, empathy, perspective-taking

• HASS: leadership, fairness, teamwork

Character strengths also enhance whole-school wellbeing programs, SEL frameworks and positive education initiatives — making them easy to embed into everyday teaching.

Character strengths are universal and can be taught from Foundation to Year 12. Younger students connect through storytelling, art and simple strengths language, while older students develop deeper self-awareness through reflection, mindfulness and wellbeing inquiry.

Your Mindful Moments resources support:

• Primary teachers (F–6): visual, engaging, calm, and accessible

• Secondary teachers (7–10): wellbeing prompts, self-reflection, emotional regulation

• Parents: simple strengths-based conversations at home

This makes Character Strengths a flexible resource that grows with every child.

A strengths-based approach encourages students to use their qualities to solve problems and interact positively with others. Instead of focusing on misbehaviour, teachers can redirect with strengths:

• “What strength could help you fix this?”

• “How can we use teamwork or fairness here?”

• “Which strength will help you stay calm?”

This approach builds empathy, emotional regulation and social awareness — key foundations of positive education and strong wellbeing outcomes.

Yes. Mindful Moments are designed to be calm, predictable and low-pressure, making them suitable for many neurodivergent learners. The short, story-led format, gentle pacing and visual focus can support emotional regulation, focus and engagement without requiring verbal responses or written tasks.

Students can simply watch and listen, or engage in their own way. There is no expectation to participate, share, or perform, allowing teachers to use the videos flexibly and responsively based on individual needs.

As with all wellbeing resources, teachers are best placed to adapt use to suit their students and classroom context.