MindUP Home Connection

At Windsor our teachers are using a program with their students called MindUP. It is founded by the Goldie Hawn Foundation and is a “program that teaches a set of social, emotional, and self-regulatory strategies and skills to cultivate wellbeing and emotional balance.”

As a PTA, we want to build a connection at home with what our students are learning at school. Each week there will be a MindUP home connection activity that you can do with your students to learn what they are learning and practice it at home.

Week 1: The Brain

MindUP starts with the brain, so check out this video and then discuss the brain with your kiddos and let them teach you what they know!

Week 2: Core Practice

The core practice is a foundational breathing exercise that helps reduce stress, calm the amygdala, increase focus, and access the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Week 3: Mindful Sensing: Listening

Mindful sensing is appreciating all that we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. We will be focusing on mindful sensing for the next several weeks. This week practice mindful listening with the following activity:

Gather together several different household items that you can make noise with (ex: pencils to tap on a hard surface, paper to crinkle, a spoon to bang against a pot, coins to rattle, etc).
Place all items inside a box or under a blanket so that your children can’t see what they are.
Ask your children to close their eyes and focus on the sound you’re about to make.
Take an item out of the box, make a noise with it, and then hide it again. Ask your children what they think made the sound.
Repeat with each item.
Follow up with these thought questions (could you listen better when your eyes were closed?/ Were you able to maintain your focus on the sound?/ Did anything get in the way?)
Now let them have a turn selecting items and making noise while you practice mindful listening.

Week 4: Mindful Sensing: Seeing

Mindful sensing is appreciating all that we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. We will be focusing on mindful sensing for the next several weeks. This week practice mindful seeing by using your eyes to notice more details. Use the following activity and /or videos:

Find a comfortable spot in your home.
Take one minute to mindfully look around you.
- Look with curiosity and a desire to see new things.
Turn away from the spot so you can no longer see it and for the next minute list as many details as you can remember about your spot.

Week 5: Mindful Sensing: Smelling

This week practice mindful smelling. The memory and smell centers in our brains are located near each other which means that our sense of smell is strongly linked with memory. Different smells impact our mood and energy level also. Follow this activity to learn mindful smelling.

Collect three small containers and three cotton balls.
Moisten each cotton ball with a different scent (essential oils, baking oils+spices, other everyday liquids, etc), and place one in each container.
Try to identify each scent by smelling mindfully with your eyes closed.
Notice any thoughts or memories that surface as you smell.
Write a descriptive word for each smell and share your memories, then try and guess the smell.
Watch this video to see this activity applied in a classroom.
Take a moment every day to appreciate the smell of your food at each meal before you eat.

Week 6: Mindful Sensing: Tasting

This week practice mindful tasting by taking the time to appreciate the flavors, textures, and temperature of the food you eat. Follow this activity to practice mindful tasting.

Choose a simple food (grape, cracker, pretzel, carrot, chocolate)
Put the food morsel in your hand and mindfully see it.
Next, mindfully smell the morsel.
Then put the morsel into your mouth, but DON’T bite down yet.
Let it rest on your tongue and notice how it feels in your mouth.
Begin to slowly chew the food while noticing the taste, texture, and temperature.
Swallow the morsel and feel it go all the way down your throat.
Watch the mindful tasting video below.

Week 7: Mindful Sensing: Movement

This week practice mindful movement which is simply moving your body mindfully. Try any and all of the following exercises.

Mirror Movement: One person is the leader and everyone else follows the leader’s movements.
Beanbag Balance: Put a beanbag on your head then raise your knee into a balancing position. Hold the position for 60 seconds while breathing deeply and noticing the sensations in your body.
Happy Dance: Put on some music that makes you feel happy and enjoy dancing together--wiggle, shake, turn, and jump!
Get Outside: go for a walk, play a sport, or any other fun thing you can do and move outside.

Week 8: Mindful Optimism

Optimism is hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something. When we face life with optimism, we feel happier. The opposite of optimism is pessimism which is a tendency to see the worst aspect of something or believe that the worst will happen. Start practicing optimism with the following activity.

Get a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.
Write Optimism at the top of one column and pessimism at the top of the other.
Sort the following words into the list where they fit best: think positively, frown, give up, happy, I can’t, down in the dumps, hopeful, half full, half empty, it’s too hard, I love a challenge, why me?, look on the bright side, I don’t care, I can, smile, confident, complain, keep trying, negative.

Week 9: Mindful Optimism

Try playing A Glass Half Full/ Half Empty game with your kids and then practice looking at life experiences from a jar-half-full perspective.

Fill a jar half full of a favorite treat, snack, or drink.
Ask your children if they see the jar half full (optimism) or half empty (pessimism).
Talk about the differences between looking at it half full or half empty and apply it to a real-life situation.
Practice looking at the things that happen this week from a jar-half-full perspective.

Week 10: Mindful Optimism

Optimism is hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something. When we face life with optimism, we feel happier. The opposite of optimism is pessimism which is a tendency to see the worst aspect of something or believe that the worst will happen. Read through the following chart and then make up scenarios and talk about optimistic versus pessimistic responses.

Week 11: Mindful Happiness

Aristotle identified two pathways to conscious happiness:

Fulfillment which is using our gifts and talents on behalf of what matters to us and
Contentment which is experiencing pleasurable moments and being satisfied with life.

This week, compile a list of things that make you and your children happy. Start with the sentence “I am happy when I . . .” Put your list up where you can see it each day, and enjoy sharing what makes you happy!

Week 12: Mindful Happiness

Corrie Ten Boom author of The Hiding Place and Concentration Camp survivor said, “Happiness isn’t something that depends on our surroundings, it’s something we make inside ourselves.” This week, start making a happiness box or a happiness wall to help you remember to be happy.

Happiness Box: Get an empty box and wander around your home and yard gathering small items that make you feel good or that capture happy memories (ideas could include: shells, photographs, stickers, fun shaped rocks, small toys, etc). Place the items in your box and enjoy looking at them often.
Happiness Wall: Pick a space in your house to hang pictures (homemade or printed), magazine collages, inspiring quotes, favorite memories, or anything else that makes you happy which can be hung on a wall. Create your happiness wall and then enjoy it!

Week 13: Mindful Gratitude

Did you know that expressing gratitude has been proven to increase happiness? Try practicing gratitude this week by making a gratitude journal.

Each day think of 3-5 things you are grateful for.
Write them down.
Add illustrations if you like.
Share your gratitude journal with your family and friends.

Week 14: Mindful Gratitude

Keep calm and be grateful! This week take a walk with your family and collect one small rock for each person. Keep the rock in your pocket each day and every time you notice it, think of one thing you are grateful for. Share one of your gratitudes at the end of the day with your family.

Week 15: Mindful Management: Anger, Sadness, Fear

These emotions are ones that we all experience. It is important to recognize and express our feelings, but we also need to find ways to neutralize negative feelings and create positive outcomes in our life. The traffic signal exercise is great to help manage each one of these emotions.

- Draw a picture of a three-colored traffic signal (Red, Yellow, Green)
- Each color represents a different way to react to angry, sad, or scared feelings.

Red: Stop and do some mindful breathing.
Yellow: Think about different ways to respond to your feelings.
Green: Try the most mindful response and see what happens.
Practice using the traffic signal exercise this week anytime you feel angry, sad, or afraid.

Week 16: Perspective Taking

“We live in a world with as many different ways of seeing things as there are people. Perspective taking allows us to consider more than one way of understanding a behavior, event, or situation.” To practice seeing things from a different perspective try the following activity. Throughout this week talk about different perspectives in real-life situations.

Get on your hands and knees outside or in a room in your house. Talk about all the things you can see.
Now stand up on a chair in the same area and talk about what you can see.
Compare the two differing perspectives and relate it to perspective taking in your everyday life.

Week 17: Mindful Empathy

“Practicing empathy is being tuned in and in tune to the inner worlds of others and making an emotional connection to that.” You can practice empathy by doing the following:

Develop your listening skills
Imagine yourself in someone else’s situation.
Practice forgiving others.
Show appreciation for the kind things others do for you.