Halloween Decorations and Worry Monsters

Hi all,

Last week I posted about some mindfulness techniques. One that the children really enjoyed was making "worry monsters." I cut out a mouth shape from some inside-out cereal boxes, left out lots of materials and let the children at it! Then they wrote down their worries and "fed" them to the monsters. I'll give some time over the coming weeks for the children to write more worries if they wish.

I unintentionally timed it very well because they look like they're part of the Hallowe'en decor! Delighted!

Bring on the spooky season!

Mindfulness teaching resources and ideas for children

Hi all,

My current unit of inquiry is about keeping our bodies and minds healthy. We have done lots of inquiry into keeping our bodies healthy and we are going to focus on our minds in the coming weeks. Here are some of the techniques we are going to try out.

INTRODUCING MINDFULNESS:

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I was wondering how to introduce the concept of mindfulness to children. An classmate of mine from university suggested starting with a bottle of water and glitter. Shake it up and explain that this is what our mind is like when it is full of thoughts - really all over the place. Then allow the bottle to have some time to settle and watch as the water clears and the glitter settles. It's a very simple and effective analogy. If you want to be super fancy, follow this recipe for a mason jar version.


MEDITATION/FOCUS TIME:
Thanks to Ms Forde's Classroom's lovely blog post, I've now ordered Mindfulness Matters' "The Zone" resource. The download hasn't worked yet but I'm hoping to get that sorted ASAP. I am really looking forward to trying it out with the children. 

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YOGA/MINDFUL MOVING:
We're going to do some Yoga as mindful moving. I don't know a lot about yoga. I've used videos on YouTube in the past but I wanted something that I would be able to teach myself. I decided to purchase this yoga resource made by Dancing into First for $4 on TPT. It has instructions for 20 different poses, written in easy to follow language (Good for teacher as well as students!!) and each pose has a child-friendly name such as "dog," "plane" or "tree."

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MINDFULNESS THROUGH ART:
A thoughtful friend of mine got me a book entitled, "Art for Mindfulness: Geometrics." It's basically an adult colouring book - right down my alley! I found lots of "mandala" colouring sheets available to download for free from Education.com. You'll need to create a free account to download them. It's worth your time as there are lots of great free resources on there! 

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SENSORY BALLOONS:
Creative Playhouse has a wonderful post on how to make child-friendly sensory balloons which work similarly to stress balls. Here you can see how they can be made with different household materials. The children can then play with them and feel the different textures, describe how they feel and discuss which ones they prefer. 




MINDFUL EATING:
Mindful eating is another area that could be discovered. As my school has a very strong healthy eating policy, perhaps we will do this with fruit. The idea is to get the children to really focus on the process and sensations associated with eating. The Guardian has a free PDF with guiding questions about mindfully eating chocolate. Again, you need to sign up for free to download it.

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RECOGNISING EMOTIONS:

We will focus on recognising different feelings and finding strategies to control negative feelings and help us to calm down. Last year we had a worry box in the classroom. There the children could anonymously write down their worries and then "send them away!" I also encouraged the children to make their own worry box to keep by their bed. I absolutely LOVE Kristina Marcelli's take on this where she made a worry monster who "eats" the worries.


I came across the resource pack, "A Volcano in My Tummy" while doing some work as a substitute learning support/resource teacher a few years back. Brown University have shared a preview of the book. You can download it for free here. I really like the outline of the person where the children draw/write what happens to their body when they get angry. More of that resource pack has been shared here.


So there you have it! If you have any other mindfulness resources/ideas to share, please comment below!

Free "Rethink Your Drink" Banner (Healthy Teeth)

Happy Monday everyone!

As part of our unit of inquiry about keeping healthy, we measured out how much sugar was in different drinks. First the children made predictions as to which contained the most/least sugar, then we looked at the packaging and weighed out these amounts. Here are some photos of when I did this activity with my class last year (I didn't get many pictures this year!).

This year I've taped the bags of sugar to the window sill, put the drinks on the window sill and put a banner, reading "Rethink your drink!" on the window above them. If you want to download that banner for free from Google Drive, just click here!

Apologies for the photo. It's very hard to get a decent photo with all that natural light in the background!

Teaching children about portion sizes

Hello everyone!

These popped up in my Facebook news feed recently. They are portion size infographics. I found that there are lots of resources out there for teaching children about healthy eating. There are lots of food pyramid and food plate posters and activities. However, lots of these neglect to mention portion size. This is a question that comes up a lot when my classes have focused on healthy eating. Click here to see all of the infographics. (Please note that these inforgraphics show adult portion size. Visit the SafeFood site for more information about portion sizes for children.)

*both images sourced from www.safefood.eu

Healthy Teeth: Rethink Your Drink activity

Hello there,

This idea is not mine. I blatantly robbed it from the following picture I found on Pinterest.

Image source: Pinterest

 Here's how we did it in my classroom:





I gave the children a number of different bottles/cans/cartons of drinks. I asked them to put them in order from what they thought contained the least amount of sugar to the most. There were lots of different ideas about this and it prompted some good discussion.

We looked at how you can find out how much sugar there is by checking out the label. The children then weighed out this amount of sugar and we displayed it in a plastic bag in front of the drink. We then reordered the items and discussed our thoughts.



Finally, we shared our learning by presenting these findings at the school assembly. (For any Mary I students out there, you'll be glad to hear that the wonderful "Brush Your Teeth" song made an appearance. I still can't get ch-ch-ch-ch ch-ch-ch-ch-ch out of my head!)

Free heart investigation sheet

Hi all,

Just a quickie for you tonight! Here's a freebie. It's an investigation sheet to use when examining the effect of exercise on the heart.

Click here or on the image below to download for FREE from my TPT store.

Enjoy!

Healthy Holiday Brochure Template

Over the past few weeks, the children in my class have been learning about the topic "Healthy Body, Healthy Mind." As this is the last week of our unit, I thought it would be nice for the children to make a booklet to show their learning about all aspects covered. 

Here is my template for you to download for free from Google Drive. Just click here or on the image. The children will design their own cover page and then I have made templates for a menu, exercise and relaxing pages. There is also an "advice" page for children to add in any other things that they have learned about keeping healthy.