This week I decided to take our mindful morning outside. In my last post I discussed the benefits of students getting outdoors. The outdoors helps boost students creative and imaginative skills, increases energy levels, decreases anger and aggression, and improves overall health. Children that are exposed to nature are said to have increased concentration, self-discipline and behaviour. Natural environments allow children to become aware of the world around them.
The activities that I have included could be spanned over a couple mindful mornings. To start, you could take your class for a nature walk. Have them notice the sticks and leaves on the ground. What can they see when they look at natural items? Can they imagine creating art with what they see? My daughters and I took to the forests near the college on the hunt for some colorful leaves. I didn’t give the girls instructions of the final assignment that they were collecting leaves for; just that I wanted them to look at the leaves and from the leaves we would create art at home. Once home, I gave them a little prompting by getting out googly eyes and glue sticks. From here they made some really cool creations. As my final idea was to create a Journal, I created my art as the title page for an Nature Journal as did my one daughter. My younger daughter decided to just create animal creatures.
Creating nature journals with your students is a great activity for any age range as it can be flexible to their ability, imagination and creativity. In our English Literature class, we went on a nature walk looking for sticks that were the same width as a folded piece of 8 x 10 paper. We used the sticks and two elastics to create a binding for our Journals. You could use popsicle sticks, coloured elastics, ribbon, or yarn as well to create a unique and personalized journal binding. Inside the journal you could add blank paper or worksheets for students to journal their thoughts and ideas. New sheets could easily be added to students journals as needed.
An activity that the nature journal could be used for is just simply have students find a spot in the forest or nature setting to write down their thoughts and feelings. Students could journal what they are excited for and what their worry is. You could also task students to write down thing of nature for each of their senses. This is typically a grounding and regulation exercise that is used to help those with anxiety or those who are unregulated become grounded and regulated again. The task is to find your breath and once your breath is found you acknowledge 5-4-3-2-1. This exercise works great as a mindful morning exercise as it encourages students to connect to the world around them. Students will need to write in their journals:
5 things they can see,
4 things they can touch,
3 things they can hear,
and 2 things they can smell.
The final sense is taste. Since we don’t want students tasting things found outside, we will make the final item to write down in the journal:
1 thing they are feeling, (happy, excited, sad etc.).
Other journal activities, would be to take students outdoors and read them a book. Students can then use their nature journals to reflect on the story and brainstorm their thoughts and ideas. The journal is just a fun way to conduct activities and learning tasks in the outdoors.
Finally, another task that I would add to students journals would be the Self-Belief Flower. With this worksheet, students could again find a quiet spot in the woods where they can fill out their self-belief flower with their beliefs and abilities. I like this activity as it creates a positive outlook for the students to motivate and encourage them to be proud of who they are. This activity also helps grow a students growth mindset and students with strong self-belief are happier and more successful in all areas of their life.
