Angela Pezzano and I have been keeping busy in the LifeLab©, developing and delivering this program to Primary School aged children. It aims to build skills of resilience in children, help them to find strategies to solve the problems they have in their daily lives, learn to recognise their emotions and make choices which will serve them best.


We are proud to have created the pilot program earlier this year and are both grateful and excited as it graduates to being an official specialist subject for the students at the school where it began.

These last few lessons, we have been learning about and practising empathy with our students and how they can demonstrate it to their peers and families.

When people share what is going on for them, we tend to want to fix it and offer solutions for them. Empathy is neither of these and the students made incredible progress in understanding this.

This week, inspired by Brene Brown’s work and aware we weren’t introduced to these words until our adulthood years, we’ve started addressing shame and guilt; two very complex concepts for these young minds, however, they have shown us by example how empathy is an antidote for shame.

We felt truly humbled by the responses of the students to the situations and roles we gave them with our LifeLab© LEGO® kit demonstrating once again, the effectiveness of grasping concepts collectively, by using the brick models. Listening and participation are enhanced and we find that time after time, these learnings are consolidated by our students.

We have also been met with great enthusiasm by staff, parents and students as we have proudly launched a Well-Being  Program for another school,  aiming to connect the students in LifeLab© during this difficult time of remote learning and confinement in Melbourne.

The first session once again proved to teach us so about how much we can learn from our students, with great student engagement and participation as Angela led them through our custom-designed session.

We look forward to continue in sharing the LifeLab© experience with our participants – and you, our insightful readers.