As we wrap up our amazing month of kindness, we celebrate all of our KID students who have become Kindness Keepers! We will continue to learn and practice our Care Out Loud theme through the end of the year. This month in counseling, the focus will be on Mindful Heartfulness - Kind and Caring on the Playground. Your students will learn and practice heartfulness with the Mindful Schools Curriculum...

The magic of heartfulness is that when we send kind thoughts to someone we care about, it makes us happy. The same thing is true with anger: when we treat someone unkindly, it can make us unhappy. Anger is normal. Everybody gets angry, and we don't have to be afraid or ashamed of anger. We want to bring mindfulness to the anger and transform it into heartfulness. Unless we are mindful, we can't catch ourselves, and we'll always just act out our anger. If we are mindful, we can choose to handle our anger differently.

Crafts for Kids: Mindful Breathing Stick

Journal questions to discuss with your students at home:

1) How does it feel to be kind to someone? How does it feel to be angry?

2) What is a difficult situation you have had on the playground? Now that you know about mindfulness, what could you do differently in the same situation?

3) How would the playground be if everyone was being mindful?

Ask your student to show you their Mindful Breathing Beads that they made in counseling, and how it works! What do you do when you get to the heart bead? ...

We made a few modifications to the instructions in the link bellow. Start with all the beads pushed to the right, with the heart bead at the end. Take a deep breath as you move each bead to the left. When you get to the heart bead, take one last deep breath, and then place your hand on your heart and practice mindful heartfulness (send kind thoughts to someone or to yourself).

Katherine I. Daily Elementary School