Taking the Next Step
So, you have been working on the breathing right? Three times a day for two weeks right? Have you begun to remember to breathe in stressful situations?
Well its ok of you have not done it perfectly, but now you have the general idea. If you haven’t been able to remember to breathe all those times now is your opportunity to make it routine. We going to take this breathing idea and incorporate it into your classroom schedule. For those of you working with children 2-7, you should have a visual schedule for yourself and the children. It can be a picture or a written schedule of your whole day. (If not it’s ok we will cover that on another day.) I am not going to ask you to rewrite your whole schedule but to copy a picture of someone breathing and place it on top of your schedule in strategic places. For example; you might want to have all the children do their three big breaths as you move into your first group activity for the day be it group reading, circle time or a writing exercise and then again as you transition to lunch time or when they come back from a break.
For those of you working with children in middle and high school, you might want to start your class with three breathes in unison or on your own depending on the group you are working with. You may, with children this age, just make it a suggestion while practicing it yourself visually at the start of every class. Some children will try to do it without being seen just to see what it does. Guaranteed, watching you make a practice of this will have a positive effect on them even if it is never clearly apparent.
Now, at whatever level you are working daily practice is the key. Whatever you need to do for yourself as a visual reminder will be of value to the children. They listen a great deal more to what you do than to what you say.
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