Mindfulness

Calm Brains Make Better Choices

Big emotions like anger, frustration, jealousy, anxiety, sadness, and stress can be overpowering to children. When children understand their brains, they are more likely to execute better responses. In the MINDUP curriculum, we are teaching students the core parts of their brains as well as their functions.

• Amygdala: Fight, Flight, Freeze
• Pre-Frontal Cortex: Wise leader
• Hippocampus: Memory saver

Essentially, we want our students to comprehend that we strive to calm down our amygdala by focusing our attention or using other calm down strategies in order to open a pathway for our prefrontal cortex (wise leader) and make smarter decisions. We hope that our students associate positive decision making with calm and focused mind and bodies. In other words, students understand the importance of calming down prior to effective problem solving.

Unit one and two runs from September through November and covers ‘The Core Practice’: How Our Brains Work, Mindful/ Focused Awareness, and Sharpening Senses. In December, unit three will cover perspective taking and optimism. After winter break, our curriculum ends with taking action mindfully by focusing on kindness towards others.