Living the Mission on UWC Day

UWC Day Dover Campus 

Peace, Yoga and Mindfulness in Grade 1

UWCSEA is a member of the international UWC movement  which is made up of 17 schools and colleges around the world and located across five continents. This week every one of those organisations celebrated 'our special day', UWC Day. The schools and colleges of the UWC movement are united by their common mission to 'make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future'.

We are living the mission!

In Grade 1 UWC Day activities were based on our mission with a specific focus on 'peace'. Children were asked "what is peace?", and "how do you know if we have peace?" One enlightened six year old answered, "I can feel peace in my heart, it makes me feel happy inside. If we all have peace in our hearts we can share it around the world." Wow.

Students and their parents participated in a Very Hungry Caterpillar yoga session, collaborated on mindful colouring, created beautiful 'calm down glitter jars', painted colourful peace stones and wrote stories about what peace feels like. It's really quite impressive to listen to a Grade 1 student talking about mindfulness, about being present and focusing on the here, the now. That a 6 year old can describe their true inner feelings, recognise and connect to their emotions at such a deep level really is amazing. What a powerful tool for young children, to enable them to successfully self manage a range of emotions, perhaps anger or anxiety, with the help of a glitter jar or a conscious practice of calming breath. If only we had been taught these valuable lessons when we were young!

                  

            

   

One of my passions is yoga and many years ago I completed the training to become a yoga teacher for children. On UWC Day I had the absolute pleasure of leading the yoga session for 112 Grade 1 students and their parents. Unfortunately we were rained out and we moved indoors, but this did not dampen our spirits! The 30 minute session was based on the Eric Carle story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and, for 30 minutes, students and parents 'ate' their way through their yoga practice! 

        

                          

   

                                                   

I am very thankful for the support of two amazing UWCSEA mums and yoga gurus, Kavita and Niloufer, who helped lead the session. We are especially fortunate that both mums work at Yoga Journal Singapore, THE leading Yoga and Meditation Magazine in the world! THANK YOU Kavita and Niloufer for supplying every Grade 1 family with a copy of the magazine, a very special treat! To all the mums and dads who came along, THANK YOU, we are grateful for your involvement and support. Another very big THANK YOU to our Grade 1 teachers and TAs who spent many long hours planning and preparing and then fully immersed themselves in this day so that it ran smoothly and was purposeful for students. 

It's the way we connect to our mission and the relationships that we build and nurture on days like UWC Day that make our college a very special place. It's days like today that I feel especially grateful for being a part of this incredible movement. If peace is all about the 'feeling in our hearts, that happy feeling inside', I think we all found it on UWC Day! 

Kavita and Niloufer are offering a special discount for the Yoga Journal for our UWCSEA community - if you would like to subscribe please go to https://checkout.subscriptiongenius.com/yogajournal.com.sg/

Personal and Social Education (PSE)

Fun Friends and PSE 

How Can You Support at Home?

For very young children personal, emotional and social development is one of the most important components of learning, playing a vital role in supporting effective interaction and developing positive attitudes to self and others. Relationships form the foundation of human experience and it is essential that young children learn the social skills needed to interact successfully with others and to develop healthy and effective connections. 

Early childhood experts describe personal development as understanding who we are, what we can do and how we take care of ourselves. Social development means learning to understand ourselves in relation to others, how to initiate and maintain relationships, understanding the 'rules' and how we behave towards others. Emotional development involves understanding our own feelings and those of other people, developing empathy and perspective. This can be broken down into three main aspects of learning and development:

• building and maintaining relationships
• managing feelings and behaviour
• self-confidence and self-awareness

At UWCSEA we believe that for learning to be most effective learners must feel secure and supported. While there are opportunities for personal and social development in all elements of the UWCSEA learning programme, the fact that we have a dedicated Personal and Social Education (PSE) programme shows how much we value its importance. Read more about our PSE programme here.

Research shows that PSE not only improves achievement by an average of 11 percentile points, but it also increases prosocial behaviors (such as kindness, sharing, and empathy), improves student attitudes toward school, and reduces depression and stress among students. (From The Impact of Enhancing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning)

Last week we had our second Parent Workshop on the Fun Friends programme presented by Dr. Natalie Games, a UWCSEA mum and Clinical Psychologist who works at Alliance Counselling. In addition to her clinical practice, Natalie is trained and licensed as a facilitator of the World Health Organisation approved FRIENDS’ programmes and has implemented these programmes with individuals, within schools and university settings in Singapore.

You can watch the Fun Friends Parent Workshop video here.

During the presentation Natalie made reference to a number of resources that you might find useful and she has shared them all below. 

Sleep

BBC Panorama Sleep documentary - Sleepless Britain, Panorama - BBC One

Screens and Sleep

Descriptive Praise

Focus on strengths in your child's efforts - Martin Seligman's character strengths VIA

Not in Praise of Praise - Acknowledge rather than praise?

Empathy

Seven Ways to Foster Empathy in Kids

Mindfulness

There are many resources out there but here is an article from The Huffington Post to kick start mindfulness practice in the home.

8 Ways to Teach Mindfulness to Kids

Others:

Robin Grille "Parenting for a Peaceful world"

From Dr. Louise Porter:

"Listen First:

Listen to children about their fears. Understand that they are fearful even if you don’t understand why. Find out if there could be some reason for the fear and remove children from a situation if there is good reason to be afraid. But even if the fear seems ridiculous, do not tell them to stop being silly, as that forces them to try to hide their feelings. They will become frightened that no one will help them and worried that their true feelings will show. These two feelings make the original problem worse. Take the panic out of being afraid.

Normalise what they are feeling. 

You might explain that everyone gets frightened at times, or teach them the difference between being frightened of something, disliking it, and being surprised by it. Sometimes we seem frightened of a cockroach when really we have been surprised that it is somewhere unexpected. Being surprised or disliking something is more manageable than being frightened of it. 

Have faith 

Express your faith that they can overcome their fears. Tell them about other times when they have overcome their fears and express to them your confidence that they can do so again. Courage does not mean being unafraid: it means feeling fear but conquering it. So congratulate your children for their bravery. 

Soothe children during meltdowns Sit with the child during a meltdown, repeating over and over that you will be there until they feel better. Do not address the object of the fear as that is not the issue: the issue is learning to manage their feelings. As you comfort them, they will be learning to self-soothe. 

Make them responsible for a solution In the long term (not during a meltdown), ask them how they plan to overcome their fears. As these are a product of their own imagination, only they can change their thinking. You might explain that the fears are sneaking up on them, and suggest that now is a good time to think about whether they would like to find a way to out-sneak them. Once they have decided to become boss of their fears, you could offer to be their ‘fears adviser’. You know about fear-dispelling magic and they know about their own brain so together you could invent a spell that will banish their fears."

A spontaneous mindful moment captured during playtime!

Forest Schools

1-2-3 Back to Base

When I was in Kindergarten, my friends and I spent recess running through grassy fields, digging in the dirt and playing 'home' among the massive root system of old eucalyptus trees. We came to school clean, we often went home dirty. To this day, the smell of eucalyptus stirs wonderful memories of my time in Primary School. On weekends the kids in my neighbourhood would gather and plan our outdoor adventures. We'd often get lost in the adjacent bush, find our way again, wade through creeks and climb trees, sometimes we made small fires and toasted bread. We learnt to be resilient, to work as a team, to take calculated risks and to be home in time for dinner. Mostly we succeeded, sometimes we failed, but we very clearly understood that our actions resulted in consequence, sometimes good, at times bad. 

Providing children with the opportunity to venture off by themselves leads to excitement, motivation and a feeling of self belief. The notion of children exploring the great outdoors, experimenting and learning surrounded by nature is not new. Kurt Hahn, founder of the UWC Movement was an early advocate for taking education beyond traditional boundaries through outdoor and experiential learning. Hahn was convinced of the importance of learning that takes place out of the classroom, that through challenge and adventure, students would learn confidence, tenacity and perseverance. (Read more about Kurt Hahn in the Zelinski book referenced below)

During the 1950's, Swedish and Danish early years educators encouraged children to play in the woodlands and forests surrounding their schools and this 'open air culture' way of life spread quickly across Scandinavia and the UK. Today, the Forest Schools movement has reached all corners of the globe. Recently our UWCSEA Infant School students in K1VMa had their first taste of 'forest friends' Singapore style!

First Forest School Session for K1VMa

Outdoor learning advocates O’Brien and Murray define Forest Schools as "an inspirational process that offers children, young people and adults regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence through hands-on learning in a woodland environment". Their research indicates that children are stimulated by spending time outside and that being given ongoing outside opportunities leads to an increase in confidence, improved social skills and communication skills, increased ability to concentrate, improved fine and gross motor movements, as well as a deeper knowledge and understanding of their world.

Introduction to Forest Schools Video

Infant School teacher Tor Marshall introduced her K1 class to the Forest School idea by setting the scene and creating boundaries, asking the children to agree on "how can we keep safe during these sessions?" Suitable agreements included returning to basecamp when the teacher calls, treat the environment with respect, care for living things, listen at all times, stay within the agreed boundary, and use safe movements only. The children then established an agreed boundary by spreading ‘magic fairy dust’ (green glitter) to physically mark the outer edge.

Spreading 'magic fairy dust'

The children were taught the signal for returning to base, “1-2-3 back to base" called by Tor, followed by “1-2-3 back to base" echoed by the children as they return to the basecamp. The call was repeated until the whole class had gathered. 

“1-2-3 back to base"

After a few practice runs the children were ready to begin the adventure within their new outdoor classroom and off they went! They explored in teams, discovered new spaces, investigated nature.

Exploring

Discovering

Investigating

Before they knew it our forest friends heard the call "1-2-3 back to base" and back they went! 

“1-2-3 back to base" here we come!

Erin Kenny, Director of a Forest School expresses concern that so many children today are deprived of the opportunity to immerse themselves in nature, to run barefoot on the grass, to dig in the mud, they risk losing the innate connection to nature which leads to compassion for the natural world.  Forest Schools and learning in an 'outdoor classroom' are ideal approaches, providing fun and meaningful ways to authentically connect children with nature.

“In the 21st Century, our Great Work must be the creation of a new, restorative relationship with the rest of the natural world. It’s time to envision that future. It’s time to bring down the barriers, which are not only between people and nature, but also between people. It’s time to bring down the barriers. Hard? Of course. But we can do the best we can while we’re here on Earth, and millions of children will surely experience the wonder of nature that past generations took for granted." 

(Louv 2005)

References

Kenny, E. (2013) Forest Kindergartens: The Cedarsong Way. University of Cincinnati

Louv, R. (2005). Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit

Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.

O’Brien, L and Murray, R. (2006). A marvellous opportunity for children to learn: a participatory evaluation of Forest School in England and Wales. Forest Research, Farnham. 

Zelinski, M. (2010) One small flame: Kurt Hahn’s vision of education. Ontario: From the Heart