Experience: Best Teacher to Digest Lesson…..with Animal Crackers and Stress Skills for Young Children!

As we age we KNOW that experience is the best teacher. So WHY NOT use experience to help children know themselves and their inner world resources! Forty years of teaching children how the mind/body/emotions work together as a system has shown me children want to know for themselves.

Children love lessons that are FUN……like chewing a chocolate animal cracker to learn the difference between tense muscles and calm/relaxed muscles.

Tasting a yummy chocolate flavor in learning self-help stress management skills works magic! Teaching pre-K migrant children and Kindergartners at another school how to be aware of the difference between tense muscles and calm muscles is a call to listen to what is going on inside them. I gave a chocolate animal cracker to each child in the different schools. We chewed together, FEELING the tension in the muscles while chewing, then felt relaxed/calm muscles after swallowing, noticing the change in breathing.

Basic steps of awareness are essential for grasping self-help and self-managing skills that make a difference in the quality of life based on choices each person makes in everyday living. Grandma Boom knows FUN is an essential ingredient for successful learning. And children digested the lesson quite well!

As published at Ashland Daily Tidings