I recently started teaching yoga to a group of 8 and 9 year olds and found at this age, there is a tendency for them to be very mean to each other. I wanted to teach the importance of affirmations so I created a lesson that they received very well and thought I would share.
To begin the lesson I used the book "Hidden Messages in Water" which is an awesome book that shows pictures of what happens to water when frozen in different conditions.
The first picture I showed them was top crystal is what formed when it was told "you're cute" the bottom photo is what formed when it was told "you fool!"
The students responded with a lot of compassion.
The next photo I showed them was a crystal that was told it was beautiful compared to a crystal that was just ignored. Some students chimed in about times they felt ignored and saw how the water could feel that way.
In the book there are several pages about how water reacts to different kinds of music so for that I downloaded the songs on my phone and played them as they looked at the pictures.
The students were excited about seeing what crystal formed to the music.
The last photo I showed them was what happened to water when exposed to tv and phones. I thought I would have to make the connection for them, but they were able to understand that exposure to technology could have an impact on the way they feel and a number of they reported feeling funny after spending a lot of time on the phone.
To tie all the information together, I asked them "So what is one of the main things our bodies made of?" they immediately answered "Water!"
"So now that you know about how water reacts to words, music, and technology, what can you tell me about how our bodies might respond to these things?"
The students were able to draw really good connections to how treating others and ourselves can be impact our state of being. From there I opened up to an activity of creating affirmation flowers. we created colorful flowers with positive messaged on the petals. On each petal they wrote something nice about themselves and on the stems we passed the flowers around and wrote nice things about each other.
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