Heartfulness (K-2nd Grades)

The Block by artist Romare Bearden exploring collage
and the theme of neighborhood

One aspect of mindfulness is Heartfulness, which is what we focused on during this class!  The organization Mindful Schools defines Heartfulness as "the intentional nurturing of positive mind states such as kindness and compassion."  Well, for my K-2nd grade students this is a little too complex of an idea!  So instead I talked about Heartfulness as sending kind thoughts to ourselves and to others.

For this class, I asked the students to think of someone who makes them happy, someone that they see almost everyday.  It could be a friend, family member, or teacher.  Then we closed our eyes and imagined this person doing something that makes him or her very happy.  After visualizing this happy, peaceful individual in our heads, we began sending kind thoughts to the person.  Closing our eyes, we repeated the words:

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be peaceful.

We took three mindful breaths after saying the words, and I asked the children to think of that special person one more time and then open their eyes.  If the students wanted to, they could share who they thought of and how the experience of Heartfulness made them feel.  

One students shared that saying the words out loud made her feel a little uncomfortable.  With such an unusual practice I wasn't surprised and I was thankful for her honesty!  Another student said that her kind thoughts didn't have very far to go because they were for her sister who was on the next yoga mat over!  When two boys said that they sent the words of kindness to themselves, I was very excited!  Who deserves kindness more than we do?  Such a great practice to start, and one that we can lose as adults: KINDNESS TO OURSELVES!

During the movement part of the class, I reminded everyone to focus on how they feel both before and after moving their bodies!  We practiced many poses that they are familiar with, and tried Crow Pose (Bakasana) once again as a challenge.  It's fun for me to watch them become comfortable with the poses and make them their own.

Art-wise, I today we looked at the work of artist Romare Bearden.  If you're interested, here is an interactive, kid-friendly site from the Metropolitan Museum of Art about Romare Bearden; you might enjoy exploring the site with your child to learn more about this fascinating artist.  I showed many images of Bearden's work, focusing on his art with collage.  Next class the students will incorporate their photographs into their self-portrait drawings to create a collage of their own.  Today we worked on developing the background of the artwork.  I asked the students to utilize one of Bearden's themes of either neighborhood or music and add that idea into the background of the picture.  It was fun to watch what they came up with! 

Here are a few more pieces by Romare Bearden that we looked at: