Emotion Explorations: Anger

Anger can be a challenging emotion to experience, and this is what we explored during our third Mind Move Make class.  I asked if anyone in the class had ever felt angry before, and every raised a hand (including me!).  In fact, most of the students had experienced anger that very day.  All of the students took turns sharing a time that they felt angry, and it was interesting hearing the things that made them feel this powerful emotion.  One girl talked about a friend who had broken a promise.  Another student shared a time that a cousin was unfair and cheated while they were playing a game.  

I asked the students to think about where they feel "anger" in their bodies.  For example, I told them that when I get angry I feel my cheeks getting hot first, then it spreads to my forehead and my entire face!  One student said she feels anger in her back when it gets tight.  Someone else felt anger in her chest, and her heart pounded really fast.  Noticing how the body feels when experiencing an emotion lets us know that the emotion is coming.  It is like the doorbell ringing before an important visitor comes to our house.  The feeling in the body is the doorbell and the emotion is the important visitor; our body lets us know which emotion we are having.

We talked about how feeling anger is part of being human.  Mindfulness allows us space between anger and our reaction to anger.  This space gives us more control; it gives us a choice for how we respond to anger, along with all the other emotions. 

After that, I let the students explore "anger" by making an angry face at one another, and making angry noises!  It is important to know what "angry" looks like, though almost everyone ended up laughing at one another's funny, angry faces!

Three students finding Child's Pose

During the movement part of our class, I taught several familiar poses along with a couple of new ones: Dolphin Pose and Sphinx Pose.  Giving the students the space of their yoga mat, I asked them to explore "anger" through movement!  They could stomp, make noises, or find a pose that felt particularly "angry".  It was fun to watch the results.

In their sketchbooks, each student designed an "angry" monster.  Through color, facial expression, shape, and scale they developed their creatures.  Here are a few from this class:

   

Emotion Explorations: Excited

First Grade Artist

What does "excited" mean to you?  This is the first emotion we investigated during Mind Move Make class in the Monsters and Emotions unit!  First, I had the students guess what emotion we would explore by reading the "excited" part in On Monday When It Rained, an excellent book by Cherryl Kachenmeister that identifies different emotions from a child's point of view.  No one guessed the emotion "excited" but every student enthusiastically voiced ideas about what the emotion might be!  Then, I asked each student to make an "excited" face for one another, which was fun to watch.  After that I read the "excited" part of the book The Way I Feel  by Janan Cain and asked them to think about a time when they felt excited themselves.    

After that it was time to move!  The students selected their yoga mats and we were ready to go.  We practiced Child's Pose, Downward Facing Dog, and Downward Facing Frog together.  Then we tried to feel every vertebra in the spine as we went from a forward fold to a standing position in "rag doll" style.  The students matched breath and movement while cycling through several Sun Salutations.  Then I asked them to invent a yoga pose that felt "excited" while staying in the defined space of their own yoga mats.  I loved watching the joyful movements they came up with while exploring "excited" with the whole body.

This session is titled Monsters and Emotions because the students are working on designing a monster for each emotion we investigate.  Last week I gave each child a sketch book, and by the end of Session One, everyone will have a collection of monsters to represent several human feelings.  Sometimes we will go beyond the sketch book and create more involved artworks.  These creative investigations of emotion will give the students the opportunity to visually describe what each feeling means to them.

To get the students in a monster kind of mood, we read Romping Monsters, Stomping Monsters, an energetic, fun-loving book by Jane Yolen. From the book and from many other visual resources the students received inspiration for designing their own "excited" monster. Before they started, we discussed the colors and facial expressions an "excited" monster might have. Everyone had a different idea about this, as everyone experiences emotion differently. It was wonderful to watch the artists at work!

  

Monsters and Emotions

Yesterday was the first class of the 2016-2017 school year!  During this thirteen week session we will explore human emotions from many perspectives and using several tools to look at emotion.  Through art, children's literature, mindfulness, and movement we will compare, contrast, and investigate the feelings all humans experience.  Our Central Idea for Session 1 is:

All people experience different kinds of emotions

As the children walked into the art room for their first Mind Move Make class, I asked them to find and sit by the sketchbook I pre-made with his or her  name on it.  The sketchbooks formed a circle, and I explained that this is how we would sit at the beginning of each MMM class.  In order to begin to create a sense of community between all the students in the class, I asked each individual to share his or her name, age, and three things he or she is thankful for.  It was fun to hear their responses!

After that we talked about what each word, MIND, MOVE, and MAKE, means in connection to the classes I teach.  I asked their opinion of what the words mean, and why I chose Mind Move Make for the name of the program.  Then we talked about mindfulness, and how mindfulness helps us pay attention to what is happening in the present moment.   

Then we brainstormed different emotion words.  The students came up with a great list, and we will explore many of the emotions on the list in the next several weeks of classes.  Everyone was eager to contribute to the conversation, so we are off to a great start!

We explored yoga and movement in the next part of our class.  Everyone started in child's pose and felt the breath move through the body in this altered form.  We tried downward facing dog, and several sun salutations.  After coming down to Malasana, we sat back into boat pose, or Navasana.  Then, coming into butterfly pose we relaxed by practicing Bhramari, or bee breath.  It sounded like there were many little bees fluttering around the classroom!

During the art part of the class, the students had the opportunity to design the front cover of their sketchbooks!  I asked them to either draw something that tells me about who they are, or to draw one of the things they are thankful for that we talked about in the beginning of class.  It was a fun and very full first class!