September
Growing Awareness This month we will learn more about how the brain grows and changes as we learn and what it means to have a growth mindset.
Gratitude Gratitude One Pager
October Compassion Compassion One Pager Compassion is a sensitivity to sadness or distress in others and the desire to alleviate, reduce or prevent that stress. Self-compassion, or self-care, is recognizing that you are hurting or stressed and acting kindly toward yourself in an effort to comfort yourself. Because we have the ability to choose what to focus on, we can choose to focus on caring for others and ourselves instead of on negative experiences. By practicing compassion you can grow newer, stronger pathways in your brain that make compassion easier to access! When you create a mindful awareness of compassion toward others and yourself, you are creating more control over your thoughts and your life. More information: Why Self-Compassion is the New Mindfulness How to Turn Your Brain From Anger to Compassion What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Compassion November Power of The Pause Power of the Pause One Pager When we are mindful of this month's topics, we learn to be more present in the moment. Our brains learn to focus better and our self-regulation increases. This helps us pay attention in school and at work. With time and practice, we are better able to tune out distractions and only spend energy on what we want to. Mindful Movement is the act of paying close attention to how your body feels when it moves. This can happen through a practice like yoga or simply paying attention to how your body moves and how it feels. More information can be found here and a quick practice is here. Mindful Tasting is focusing on each bite of food, without the interruption of other thoughts or distractions, like the TV, radio or your phone. A fun exercise can be found here and more tips here. Mindful Smelling is paying close attention to how something smells. Your sense of smell and your hippocampus are closely related! That’s why memories or feelings come up when you smell certain things. December
Finding Focus A Way of Seeing Mindful Seeing is the act of truly seeing something without judgement, in the present moment. Green or blue? Square or rectangle? Smile or smirk? Mindful seeing lets us better observe ourselves, other people, and our surroundings to more fully enjoy and earn from them. The game “I Spy” is a great way for students to mindfully look at the space around them and notice things they might not otherwise see. January Perspective Perspective One Pager Perspective is a way of looking at something – a problem, an issue, a photograph – and seeing it in a way that is unique to you and your experience. Practicing perspective taking creates new pathways in the brain that makes seeing other points of view easier. We become more accepting of opinions and cultures that differ from our own. Happiness and gratitude can also arise from looking things from other perspectives. A problem may actually be an opportunity! More information: You Don't Have to Agree With Someone to See the Goodness in Them The Richness of Everyday Life |
February
Choosing Optimism Optimism One Pager Optimism is choosing to look at events or conditions in a way that focuses on positive outcomes combined with the drive to participate in creating that outcome. Perspective-taking can help us find the optimistic side of a situation. Some ways you can practice choosing optimism on your own are:
6 Steps for Teaching your Child Optimism Cultivating Practical Optimism March Finding Joy Finding Joy One Pager The dictionary defines joy as “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” You can experience big feelings of joy as well as smaller moments that add up to big ones. Joy isn’t tangible. It can be found all around you, but you may have to remind yourself to look for it. Joy is a feeling. It’s a little like happiness but it can be harder to find. It may hide in the little things you enjoy doing, like reading a good book, feeling the sun on your face after a month of rain, or that first sip of water when you are really thirsty. More information: How to Awaken Joy in Kids Google's Former Happiness Guru Developed a 3 Second Brain Exercise for Finding Joy April Kindness Kindness One Pager "“In my research it was obvious that doing acts of kindness, and thinking about other people instead of yourself, is the clear road to happiness,” Carter says. “So I started asking my children two questions at dinnertime." Click here to read the full article. More information: Check This Box if You're a Good Person May
Marysville Gives Back (MGB) MGB One Pager Throughout the school year we learn how our brains work, how to recognize our feelings, and what tools we can use when we want to feel differently. We learn how to see others’ perspectives, and what it feels like to have compassion and gratitude. As the school year begins to wind down, we’ve begun thinking about how we can give back to our community. With all that the community does for us, this is a time for us to give back to them. No matter how small an act of kindness is, it sends a ripple out into the world that has the opportunity to continue to grow and touch the lives of many people. Our MGB projects are a way for us to experience sending that kindness out into the world; to observe the positive effect our actions can have on others, and to notice how that feels even when we might not get recognition for our kind acts. June Celebration! Let's celebrate all our hard work. We will have an assembly where students present their Marysville Gives Back projects and then move outside for games and ice cream! |