Mindful May Week 1 Record Sheet
#MindfulMay is a chance for teachers to introduce Mindfulness to their classes. You don’t need to know what mindfulness is (see previous blog post for a quick explanation) or to have practised it yourself, these will be super-quick, 2 minute activities to do throughout May to improve your class’s wellbeing.
Week 1 Challenge: VIBRANT VISUALS.
This exercise is focusing on one of the 5 senses: sight. It will calm down the class, encourage their brains to forget any worries they may have and focus their attention. It will teach them to be observant and it might shock them to realise how little detail they visually take in (If we took in all the detail every time we looked around, this would be information overload). This skill is used by artists when drawing.
Every day this week (w/c 30.4.18), or for a couple of days – whatever you can cram into your timetable…ask the class to sit in silence and look around the room you are in.
Ask them to really look carefully… is there an item that they haven’t noticed before? (Maybe something on the ceiling or a pattern in the carpet) Or detail on an object they haven’t seen. Are the colours stronger that they hadn’t noticed or can they see different shades of a colour?
Try looking at an everyday item such as a pencil. Did they notice how many chips were in the paintwork? How many faces are on it? How you can see different shades of brown in the wood?
Ask some of these rhetorical questions to the class as they are looking in silence.
When the minute is up, have another minute for children to talk to a partner or share with the class what they noticed. Choose one child (or scribe for the class) to summarise their findings on the class record sheet (see attachment at the top of post).
How do they feel after the minute’s silence? Calm? Focused? Energised? How often do they ‘hear’ silence in a day?
Tomorrow, try doing this in the ICT suite, the hall, on the playground 1 minute before playtime… comment with where you did this with your class and what they noticed!
Have fun!
Holly Morris
The Mindfulness Teacher
The Mindfulness Teacher 