Mindfulness and Love
/Hi all,
Over the past week we’ve had some challenges with tricky nap times. We’ve noticed some big, anxious (and loud) feelings cropping up as we move to our (ideally) restful time of day. It’s been on my mind how to best support our friends as they move through these feelings and learn they have the ability to sooth themselves (along with much teacher help, patience, and love).
One way to help is to give friends the skills to calm their minds and bodies. This week we started mindfulness yoga and breathing. We are doing this through animals stories (moving from and egg to a caterpillar to a butterfly looking for nectar for example). During these movements we often “go to sleep” and take long deep breaths, we then “wake up” and continue our animal story. We listen to the trees and leaves swaying in the breeze and the rain lightly falling.
Today I introduced a few other stories from a new book called, Breathe Like A Bear: 30 Mindful Moments for Kids to Feel Calm and Focused Anytime, Anywhere, by Kira Willey and Anna Betts. We practiced holding a candle and blowing on it lightly to make the flame flicker and we held a delicious mug of hot cocoa and gently cooled it off with long, quiet breaths.
In conjunction with our mindfulness and yoga, I’ve introduced our singing bowl as a focused calming instrument and we've also continued to practice asking for many many hugs from our friends. There was a lot of love in the classroom today.
The most wonderful (and sad) news of the day was our circle time and snack time gifts of presents and hugs (and cupcakes) to Phebe! She also taught us a beautiful song about love and light. We love her so much and are incredibly grateful to her for her time and love she’s given us. We will miss her so! She will be back as soon as she possible.
Have a lovely weekend!
Jen (and Phebe and Amy)
