Monday, March 12, 2018

Educating the Heart


In today's world, educating the heart is just as important as educating the mind. In fact, I believe that without first educating the heart, you may never educate the mind. Building relationships with and between my students is one of my biggest passions and strengths as a teacher. It is important for me to relate to the children and get to know them on a deeper level. It is also important for the students to find their own identity while also learning empathy for one another. One way to start this SEL journey in kindergarten is by recognizing our emotions and finding ways to regulate our body.


Kindergarten has spent a lot of time this year collaborating with Mindful Practices to help the students become aware of their emotions and develop strategies to regulate their body. As a class, we have spent a lot of time talking about the zones of regulation, as shown by the characters from Inside Out. The green zone is the state in which children best learn, so our ultimate goal is to always get ourselves back into the green zone.




Our primary focus at the kindergarten level is for the kids to identify their emotions, own their emotions, and find a strategy that works for them to get back into the green zone. I emphasize daily that it is okay to get ourselves into all of the zones of regulation. I explain to the kids that I feel my body get into every zone throughout the day, but I have been practicing strategies that work for me to get myself back into a calm and happy state. I even share those strategies with the students, and own my emotions in front of the students.

In order to practice self-regulation, we have created a chart in which the students check in with their feelings throughout the day. When the students first come in the classroom, they move their clip to show how they are feeling. If they are in the middle, or sad, there are strategies that they can choose from to get themselves back into the "happy" zone. Some students come in very tired, so they choose to do some exercises to wake up. Others come in sad because they miss their mom and dad, so many of them will go into the calm-down corner and think about their happy place. These are only a couple of the many strategies we have practiced in the classroom.



Our collaboration with Mindful Practices has helped us teach the students awesome and real strategies that can help regulate their bodies. Some of the strategies that have worked best for our kids are different types of breathing exercises and yoga.



Here is one strategy that we have used in kindergarten this year. The students are practicing control of their breathing by blowing the cotton ball to the tips of their fingers without it falling off. It was challenging at first, but overtime the kids were able to control their breathing and focus to successfully blow the cotton ball into the correct position.




Another strategy the kids have found useful is yoga. We use yoga when we need to relax or de-stress.  There are several poses that the kids have learned and practice daily.




Today we learned a dance that incorporates both breathing techniques and yoga! The kids loved every second of it!


We look forward to continuing to collaborate with Mindful Practices and learning new strategies to help regulate our bodies. We will continue to practice self-regulation and searching for our own identity.

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