Our teachers used the following wellness activities along with community meetings on Google Meet during virtual school to support the social and emotional learning of their students. You can review them to see which ones might be the most helpful for your children. Do look at multiple grade levels for ideas.
A good place to approach wellness for the whole family is "101 Strength-Based Actions To Connect from A Distance". It was written for quarantine but it is applicable for normal times as well. A second whole family approach to wellness is "12 Steps to Improve Family Wellness in 2020 and Beyond".
Build in daily physical activity time aiming for 60 minutes or more when possible. Again, offer choices for your children to be very active, when possible. Here is a helpful list for indoor and an outdoor list of activities. Our high school PE teachers put together a fitness website loaded with workouts and dance routines. The target audience is older students but this doesn't mean that our elementary school students working with their parents cannot try some of the activities!
EC>
We’ve done read alouds and games that fall into SEL learning. Books include:
Sharing physical/mindfulness links and activities each week including:
Staying Connected to Friends
Writing letters/cards to friends then sharing it with their friends on SeeSaw
Look to ask the parents what they are doing to nurture both (when possible) physical and digital connection time for their children with their friends.
Self-reflection
Helping families
Healthy snack recipes
Take family virtual field trips together to see the world. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
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K & G1>
Go Noodle for activity ideas
Yoga in the Classroom videos
We encourage play, relaxation and balance in life through our own actions online and the way we interact with the children and their families virtually.
Take family virtual field trips together to see the world. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
Look to ask the parents what they are doing to nurture both (when possible) physical and digital connection time for their children with their friends.
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G2-3>
Take family virtual field trips together to see the world. You can search and find many. Here is one list.
We did the self-love and gratitude challenges from this website before the Spring Break.
Games that you can play virtually.
Go Noodle for activity ideas
Yoga in the Classroom videos
Growth Mindset 5 day challenge - here
Sharing of something they did that week, that they are proud of e.g. a craft, drawing, lego, plant a seed etc.
Look to build into the weekly planner the assignment of physically (when it is allowed) and digitally getting together with friends on a daily basis with friends.
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G4-5>
Random Acts of Kindness listing of 45 acts. The goal is to color in the entire 8 or so activities for the week.
“Hobby Week”, “Gratitude Week”, “Random Acts of Kindness Week”, “Poetry Week”, “GoNoodle Week” - choose one each week to focus upon.
Go Noodle for activity ideas
Yoga in the Classroom videos