Too Blessed to be Stressed
“Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
November! It’s hard to believe that it’s so close to the end of the year, and Election Day. It’s also hard to believe I actually have a minute free to finally blog again.
It’s been a super busy month for me, with all of my regular teacher and mom responsibilities (which I LOVE) and grad school work. It’s exciting to be pursuing a master’s degree/principal certification at Lamar University and although the work can be overwhelming at times, with all of the projects, practicum work, lectures and the endless amount of research, I’m enjoying every moment of it. Well. Maybe not EVERY minute, but luckily I have an amazing cohort to turn to during those not so enjoyable moments.
Yesterday I was reminded how much we can learn from our children when we were discussing anxiety in my second grade classroom. It has been a topic of conversation since the very beginning of the year when I read the book A Little Spot of Anxiety by Diane Alber. After reading the book I taught my students several strategies to remember when they feel their ‘anxiety spots’ begin grow.
We revisit this topic often, and they love the breathing exercises from Breathe Like a Bear. So far, our favorite is Hot Chocolate breathing. I’ve also spent time teaching them what it means to be mindful, and how mindfulness can be practiced. If you are interested in specific activities, go ahead and check out this blog post in which I shared many many strategies for teaching mindfulness to kids.
Yesterday we read the book Ruby Finds a Worry and made cope-cakes. Have you ever heard of them before? I found out about them in this article when I was researching ideas for helping children deal with stress.
Cope-Cakes are another way of saying ’Coping Skills’ but much more fun! The lesson I learned from my awesome little second grade scholars yesterday is that there is no need to be worried or anxious when there are so many Cope-Cake flavors to choose from!
The children came up with Cope-Cake recipes including everything from taking deep breaths, reading a book, blowing bubbles to taking a nap! This activity sparked lots of conversation about different types of worries they have had in the past and what they will do in the future if those worries come back. I loved the way they were so open about the things that had bothered them and how they were all so willing to come up with new ’flavors’ to help each other choose healthy over non-healthy strategies. It was truly inspiring!
Here are some of my students ;) with their Cope-Cakes and Cope-Cake recipes:
Pretty cool, right? I have the BEST students:)
Thank you so much for visiting the blog today. I hope you found this post worthwhile. I truly appreciate your time and attention.
If you would like to connect further, please feel free to leave me a comment, message, or email and I will get back to you in a timely fashion.
Yours truly,
Jennifer
PS. I found a few new fabulous fall jackets at SHEIN ( dresses are from Target) so go ahead and click the links to shop and don’t forget to use CODE: MTFIista for 15% off!
