Students in Division 19 have been learning about feelings and mindfulness. We began with exploring our Todd Parr “Feelings Cards” to begin to name and define feelings. Then, as part of a three step process to develop our own Classroom Charter, we discussed how we want to feel when we come to school. We agreed on six feelings words: calm, happy, excited, helpful, brave, and kind.
The next step was to brainstorm ways we can show that we are feeling this way. Below is our brainstorm:
Our next step, that we will continue to work on, is what to do if we make a mistake and hurt someone’s feelings (because as we all know, we all make mistakes, and we learn from them!). Stay tuned for an “official”copy of our Classroom Charter to come home soon!
We also began our MindUp program by learning about the brain. We learned about 3 important parts of the brain: the amygdala (our little animal/security guard), the hippocampus (our memory keeper), and the pre-frontal cortex or PFC (the decision maker). Sometimes our little animal is feeling scared, or frustrated, or “untamed” and using practices like mindful breathing help to “tame” our animal and calm ourselves down in order to make good choices.
Below is the video we watched to accompany our MindUp lesson about the brain: