Admitting that I did no mindfulness on here last week made me feel guilty enough to try some this week.  It's still something I feel awkward doing, especially with other adults in the classroom.  I wondered if anyone (out of the hundreds of readers) have any tips or whether it's best just to ignore other adults and go for it...

Before stating what I did, a teacher friend sent me a couple of links about mindfulness in schools, one of which takes place today!

1 - A showing of a mindfulness documentary in London this evening:
Mindfulness documentary screening in London

2 - A link to a film of how mindfulness teaching changed the attitude of some children in a school in San Francisco Room to Breathe

So, on to my practice this week.

What I did:
At the beginning of Maths on Monday I asked the children to sit quietly, to concentrate on how their bodies felt (their feet, legs, stomachs etc), the sounds around them, their feelings and finally their breathing.

It was interesting that some children found it very hard to stay still and others seemed quite relaxed during the short experience.
There was only one comment when I asked how it felt: 'That was weird! We don't normally do it at the start of Maths.'  I moved on to the Maths lesson.

Later in the week (which was really a bit disrupted by a wonderful Viking day and university researchers) the children came in from playtime and I asked them what they'd like to play.  They said sleeping lions.  So, ever mindful of an opportunity to bug them with mindfulness, this became another excuse for a body scan and awareness raising exercise.  Some children, who can play sleeping lions, moved around much more than we would do normally as I was talking to them.

What the results were:
I'm not sure really, as usual.  The children produced some really good writing this week on rainforest food chains and some wonderful videos on internet safety.  Can I attribute these to mindfulness?  Probably not.  Did we have a good week?  Yes.  The gardening was great...