Free Inquiry: Health & Wellness

I am choosing to focus my Free Inquiry project on health & wellness, particularly on how to create and maintain healthy habits and routines. My goal is for this blog is to be a resource for myself, future teachers, and families to hopefully help establish and maintain healthy routines in and outside of the classroom. I plan to share knowledge and information on all things health and wellness, with a focus on emotional regulation and teaching children how to understand and cope with their feelings. Emotional regulation is something that I am very passionate about teaching and I believe it is something that not only children but adults can benefit learning about as well. I plan to share tips and tricks that I use personally when I am overstimulated such as yoga, breathwork and excercise, as well as share lesson plans and activites to learn more about our emotions in the classroom.

Where my passion for emotional regulation came from…

Years ago when I was working as an educator in preschools I started on my own personal journey of wellness. I started to learn a lot about myself, my emotions, and how to take care of my mind and body. I realized as I was learning all of these new tools and tricks on how to care for myself, it was never something I was really taught as a child. As a 23 year old at the time, this was the first time I was learning about emotional regulation and just how complex our mind-body connection is. I started to research emotional regulation and how to incorporate it into the classroom, and after reading “The Colour Monster” my “feelings mouse” was born. My feelings mouse was a small rock with a painted mouse on it, which ironically was gifted to me by my preschool teacher. I created a board that had different colours on it which all represeneted different emotions; Blue = sad, anxious, tired, sick. Green = calm, ready to learn, peaceful, safe. Yellow = excited, energetic, happy. Red = angry, frustrated, annoyed. Black = scared, afraid, nervous. During our morning circles I would pass the feelings mouse around and ask each child to put the mouse on which colour they are feeling. We would have conversations about each feeling and how no feeling is “better” or “worst” but all feelings are important. I created a list of things the children can do when they feel overwhelmed with blue, yellow, red or black feelings to help get back to green. This list was shared at circle time and was posted in the classroom for children to come back to if they needed. I saw the major difference this made in not only the children’s day but in my own day when I would start our morning circles with these check in’s. It gave the child an opportunity at the beginning of the day to explain how they are feeling which allowed me to better help them and understand them more for the rest of the day. From then on I kept learning about regulation and coming up with different circle ideas on how to share this information in an age appropriate, fun way.