Cuddly Frogs and learning to Breathe: Week 1 of 'Mindfulness Matters' at Kowloon Junior School

--'You've got the talking stone, what did you think about the meditation?'

pause

--'You're frog is so cuddly!'

--'Brilliant!'

So the dangers of getting too plush a puppet for Year 2s are illustrated, but it was part of a wonderful process in fantastic opening sessions for year 2 and 6 at Kowloon Junior school. 

‘Mindfulness matters’ is an eight-week mindfulness/ Attention training course for children in primary schools.  The course teaches  how to be mindful or attentive. The half-hour lessons take place once a week at a set time  delivered by  a specially trained mindfulness teacher. In addition, 10-minute exercises are practiced on the other schooldays delivered by the class teacher.

One class in Year 6 and one  class in Year 2 will be piloting the course with some before and after data collected form the children, parents and teachers.

In year 2 the focus in the first session was on the introduction of the attention bells, the talking stone, breathing, and sitting still like a frog. The students were engaged and attentive, (despite the distractions of the plush frog!), with just a few finding it really hard to sit still. This is a difficult task for 7 year olds, but there were some great moments of calm and stillness. They loved the Breathing Rhyme:

B is for Breathing

Full of fresh air from up high

it comes in through your nose

and goes out again with a sigh (pppphhhhhhh) 

Suffice to say they were really easy to re-energise with the popcorn method at the end of the session!

In Year 6 the focus of the students was outstanding. They were interested and attentive from the outset, listening and applying a great degree of thought to any questions posed. They were really interested in a discussion about attention and memory and were so still during the first attempt at sitting still like a frog you would have thought they had practiced for years!

All told both groups were a credit to the school and I'm looking forward immensely to session 2!

The book accompanying the program ‘Sitting still like a frog: mindfulness exercises for kids (and their parents) is published by Shambhala, and available through Amazon or the Book depository.