Welcome to Calming Thursdays! We can all get stressed sometimes. Stress is a normal part of life...however, we don't want it to get in the way of fully living our lives or let it keep us from being productive, happy and healthy! Let's talk about some ways to practice de-stressing or calming strategies on Thursdays.
6/4/2020
Happy Thursday! Today is calming Thursday so make sure to do something for yourself today that makes you feel good! Here is another breathing exercise to help you slow down your day and enjoy the little things; it's called hot cocoa breathing. Follow the picture below!
5/28/2020
One thing that makes me feel calm is soothing music. I love listening to gentle sounds like ocean waves, birds chirping and the breeze blowing. All of those sounds are calming and relaxing for me! What kinds of sounds make you feel relaxed? Maybe the quietness of snow falling, the rain falling down on the windows or the sound of the ice cream truck coming down the street? :) Try listening to some soothing music today to feel calm and relaxed!
5/21/2020
The zones of regulation are designed to help us regulate our emotions, realize how we are feeling and help us problem solve to solutions to feel better. They can help us with our sense of calm in getting to the state of emotion we want to be. The graphic below shows the different color zones that we can be in with our emotions. The key is recognizing when you are in a certain zone and coming up with ways to help you move to the zone you want to be in (green most of the time!). Here's an explanation of the zones:
BLUE Zone – Your body is running slow, such as when you are tired, sick, sad or bored.
GREEN Zone – Like a green light, you are “good to go.” You body may feel happy, calm and focused.
YELLOW Zone – This zone describes when you start to lose control (but still have some control), such as when you are frustrated, anxious, worried, silly or surprised. Use caution when you are in this zone.
RED Zone – This zone is for extreme emotions such as anger, terror and aggression. When you are in this zone, you are out of control, have trouble making good decisions and must STOP!
There are no good or bad zones. Every zone is appropriate in different situations.
These are good tools to know and teach kids to help them better recognize and regulate emotional states (and adults too!)
Some info taken from museumschool.org
5/7/2020
For today's calming Thursday, let's talk about anxiety. Anxiety is your body's natural response to stress; a little anxiety in certain situations is healthy and normal such as going to a new school for the first time or getting ready for a big football game. Anxiety turns into a problem for a lot of us when it causes us to have irrational thoughts of worry, stress or unnecessary hardship that gets in the way of us living our lives happily. Thankfully, there are so many coping skills and strategies to help overcome these negative thoughts. One of those is making a worry stone! Today, try and go outside and find a nice rock or stone that feels good to you, one that when you rub it between your fingers it makes you feel calm. The rock or stone you pick is completely up to you and when we're in school, you can ask Mrs. Ponce for your own worry stone! But for now, we'll settle for one you pick.
Whenever you're feeling stressed or worried about something, grab the stone and talk about how stressed you feel about a certain situation. Say why you're feeling that way and express allllll the worries you have about it, how nervous you are, how scared you are, etc. Set a time for 3 minutes to have this 'stress talk' to your worry stone. When the timer is up though, it's time to put away the worry stone in your pocket, in your room, in a safe place and move on for the time being. That 3 minutes is your time to get those valid feelings out but the timer indicates it's time to change our thinking after that, and move on to the positive. No more negative talk after you get it all out to your stone. You can rub your stone to remind you to think of the positive if you find your thoughts slipping back to those negative feelings anytime. Hopefully this helps!!
Thursday 4/23/2020
Try taking a slow down moment at some point in the day and focus on coloring for this week's calming Thursday. Either get a blank piece of paper and draw a picture of anything you like or, grab a coloring book page and color in a pretty picture you choose. Pick crayons, colored pencils, markers, paint, whatever makes you happy and focus on the colors you're using. Why are you picking those colors? Colors affect our mood and can be a reflection of how we are feeling, think about that as you color. After you're finished, give it to someone you care about or hang it in your room to remind yourself to stay calm.
Thursday 4/16/2020
Spring break, enjoy it!
Thursday 4/9/2020
Calming grass moment: To make a calming grass moment, go outside (hopefully the weather is nice!) and lay down on the grass. Close your eyes. What do you see? What thoughts are coming across your mind as you hear the sounds of the outside and feel the breeze brush over you? What do you hear? What do you feel? Open your eyes, what do you see? Taking a minute to slow down and do things that bring us calm can help us feel a little better in our day.
For Thursday 4/2/2020, try the cookie breathing technique if you are feeling stressed out. Cookie breathing means imagining you have a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in front of you. Imagine the smell that comes from those fresh baked cookies...sweet, chocolatey and warm...breathe in your nose for five full seconds. 1....2.....3.....4....5 and inhale the smell of those cookies then exhale, breathe out through your mouth for another 5 seconds....1.....2.....3......4.......5....... for extra fun, ask your parents if you can make some cookies as a family activity!
