Calming the Mind

I love this idea and wish we could try it here. The article describes different ways of calming children throughout the day and helping them find ways to calm themselves. (I remember this from baby books about trying to help babies learn to comfort themselves if they woke up in the night and thus being about to fall asleep on their own.)

I believe we live in a busy, go, go world that gets easily impressed on our children, from teachers trying to cover test material to parents trying to fit everything in. We have a noisy life with beeps, buzzes, sounds coming from every direction. Five minutes out of the day to calm the mind might be a good thing.

Comments

Jet City mom said…
You might be interested to hear about an unusual club one of the English teachers began at Garfield high school this year.

Garfield's latest club, the Quiet Club, is off to a roaring start. This past Wednesday we had four people. I, Mr. Gish, was there first, eating my lunch (as quietly as I could) and waiting. Soon after, two girls came in, but who weren't quite sure what quiet meant. They tried to keep up a conversation at the whispering level until I let them know that whispering meant they weren't truly being quiet. They caught on quickly though, and true silence was all that was heard from that point. Finally, the co-founder of the club and master quieter, Adrian Randall, came in, nodded gently and sat down. We four, from that moment on, proceeded to get really, really quiet for about seventeen minutes. To consciously sever oneself from noise was wonderful. I rejoined the world relaxed and moving in a different, slower gear. I encourage more people to come and join us and be quiet.

Go softly,
Mr.Gish

It is still going strong and looks to continue next year.
I think it is a great idea.
Some schools also offer yoga in the classroom or as an after school activity- I agree that we need practice to learn to be comfortable hearing ourselves think , or even "not " taking in information for two minutes.
6/20/07, 10:25 PM
Anonymous said…
Don't the students at The New School also have some type of meditation/focus time during the day?
6/21/07, 11:55 AM
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