The Social Teacher

This game has nothing to do with the Beanie Baby Breathing blog.  This is a game that involves two (maybe three, depending on your class) beanie babies.  I get the students into a circle (sitting).  I make sure all the students are touching knees. I don't want to the students to have a bunch of space in between them, nor do I want them on top of each other.   Once the students are all settled, I tell them the object of the game: watch the beanie baby, don't let it fall.  The students toss the beanie baby in the same order for the game.  Each student will get to catch and throw the beanie bag once.   The first time we do it together.  We repeat who gets the beanie baby every time we get to the next person.  So, repeat the order 22 times because I have 22 students.  This will help the students remember who got it and the order the beanie baby goes through.   The first time we do this we only use one beanie baby.   The second time, we start with one. Once, I see they are comfortab

 This is the last Mindful Monday.  All of the lessons were created and taught by MHA of Sheboygan County.  You need to be trained by them in order to receive the resources and videos. I highly recommend it.  Our last lesson was a video and coloring activity.  This lesson is about setting the intentions for the remaining for the school year.  My students created posters of their favorite mindful resource. These are up in our classroom to remind us how and when to use them! 

This lesson was taught with our writing lesson today.  My students have been struggling with what to write.  When I saw this lesson was coming up, I thought let's put them together.  This week is all about if you are struggling with feeling sad or mad a lot. Write a list of all of the things you are grateful for. After watching the video. I told my students to take out a piece of paper.   Before my students got to writing what they are grateful for, I had them do a body scan.  After our body scan they their mind was more clear for this assignment.   I showed my students my grateful list.  I wanted to show them an example in case they were struggling.  I know my students should be grateful for many things, but I don' t think they realize they should be grateful for them.  I wrote: my family, my home, my camper, my house, my food, my favorite sports team, etc. This got their mind thinking of the things in their life and they wrote down a ton of ideas.  I had them put this in thei

I am so sad I wait to do this at this time of the school year.  I wish I could do it at least one or twice a month.  This activity was from the Mindfulness training I did way back in February. This lesson is an extenstion off of lesson Week 8.  One way to show generosity is using kind words to each other and use words of encouragement. I gave each student two sticky notes.  One sticky is a compliment to a friend, the other words of encouragement of their self.  I loved reading there responses!

 Being Mindful is also about being kind and generous.   This is a quick lesson about how to be and show generosity.   After watching the video, I give the students take to think about how someone has shown you generosity in our classroom? I make a list.  (HERE IS OURS) Then I ask... How can we show generosity? We think of many ways, I write them down.  Then an idea popped into my head.  Teacher Appreciation is coming up.  My students created cards for all of the teachers in our building to show them generosity.   They were so excited about these cards. They were proud of themselves, and they wanted these cards to look their absolute best.  Here are some of them below! They were so adorable! 

First how is the Mindful resource bucket going... 1. We had to talk about how only one student can use it at a time.  2. You use it for two minutes, then go back to your seat.  3. No one will use the calming jar, only a teacher can hold it.  4. Use it only during lessons, not when you are coming back from recess.   It is going well.  It has been used at the correct times, and the incorrect times.  It is a learning process for us all.  This week is about being aware of your emotions and how to control them using mindful moments.  After watching the video, we mostly discussed the emotion: mad. My students and I talk about our emotions daily.  We discuss how to control our emotions during the day. The one we struggle with is being mad.  After watching the video, we discussed that it is okay being mad.  It is going to happen.  I even told them that teachers get mad.  But how we control our anger can be helpful using mindful moments.  I showed them a poster about Labeling Your Thoughts.  Af