Friday mornings are the perfect time for mindfulness.  Today, we read The Color Monster by Anna Llenas.  We gave colors to our feelings and used these colors to help us describe what we felt.  We then practiced our belly breathing with beanie baby belly buddies, each one an ocean animal.  We learned that our breathing is like the waves in an ocean.  Our bellies go up and down, as the little animals ride the waves of the breathing that we control.  When we finished, each child blogged here, on their learning journal page, about how they feel.  It was a powerful morning, as children talked to me about what makes them happy (yellow) or angry (red) or calm (green) and more.

I remembered that on our Seesaw blog, after the children draw a picture, the instructions at the top of the blog remind them to “explain and reflect”. This idea fits perfectly into being mindful. As we are becoming more aware of what we feel, we are better able to explain and reflect on ourselves. The guardrails we use for academic learning in our class, such as documenting, reflecting, questioning, and self assessment fit perfectly into our mindfulness lessons. I actually heard myself saying, “Connection!”

Junior kindergarten continues to be mindful.  Mindful of how we are feeling, and how we treat each other. But also mindful of the process and how we become better at explaining, reflecting, and self monitoring. These are big ideas even for adults and it is extremely powerful to see young children understand and internalize these lessons. Mindfulness is a tool, and we see how it crosses over from academic learning, to problem solving, to social and emotional growth. We are learning to not only own our early academic learning, but our emotional learning as well.

When your child comes home today, or when you are having Shabbat dinner and discussing the peach and the pit of your day, ask them what color they are feeling.  After reflecting, I am feeling yellow (happy) because I have my dream job (and it’s almost Shabbat), green (calm) because I understand that learning is a process and we are all right where we should be, and pink (love) because I love the opportunity I’ve been given to learn and grow with your children.  What color are you feeling?

Deep breath. Shabbat Shalom