Tau’olunga Mai
Tau’olunga is a traditional Tongan dance. This embodied activity helps children bring awareness to their surroundings and connections through song and dance. You are welcome to adapt this activity to a dance/song from your culture. This can be incorporated as a daily practice to support students to foster a mind-body connection and ground to the…
Read MoreKeeping the Scaries Away Shop
This learning experience provides prompts for creating a play space where the children create an imaginary store that will keep the “scaries” away. It is designed to be offered to children after you have facilitated the Scared Stuffy learning experience. If you do not want to facilitate the Scared Stuffy, you could offer these play…
Read MoreWhat Is Hope?
This learning sequence is designed to help children (and teachers) gain greater insight into the notion of hope. The sequence begins with the educator sharing a picture book or short animated film. The educator then employs the teacher in role convention and acts as one of the characters from the book/film. The sequence concludes with…
Read MoreThe Home Within Me
This activity offers opportunities for children to rediscover their sense of place by connecting to self and community. This lesson offers a simple sharing circle to incorporate into daily practice to support children to rebuild their sense of place in response to losing their home/community due to natural disaster. There are options for how to…
Read MoreNavigating the Waves
This activity offers a space where students can contemplate emotional and physical responses to help navigate the circumstances they are experiencing. They do this while creating imagery that encourages them to identify what will help them cultivate a sense of resilience and self regulation as they move forward. Students will create a collage (collaborative or…
Read MoreDictionary of Emotions
This activity supports children through a variety of mediums to connect and explore as they build their emotional literacy in the creation of a dictionary of emotions. This unit of work was created by Claire Coleman, Katy Pérez, and Amanda Wallace. View Lesson PLan
Read MoreMatariki for Tamariki
In this activity, the teacher provides provocations to prompt the children’s curiosity in exploring the influence of Matariki within their lives. This experience would ideally be offered after Matariki and the seven other stars have been introduced to the children, and is more suitable for a small group of maybe six children (maximum) at a…
Read MoreWorries Are Like Clouds
This unit works with the picture book: Worries Are Like Clouds and supports children to explore what worry is, how it feels in their body, and how they can express worry in a healthy way. The first learning experience in the Worries Are Like Clouds unit is called Jar of Joy. The second learning…
Read MoreVisiting the Star Family
This learning experience takes the children on an imaginary trip to Space where they meet with a Star Family, exploring the topic of caring for families, having dreams and wishes, and navigating change. Check out the professional development video (link below) for an example of how the learning experience was facilitated. This unit of work…
Read MoreKa ora te whenua, ka ora te tāngata
When the land is well, the people will be well. This learning experience offers opportunities for tamariki (children) to explore their individual and collective relationship with te taiao (the beyond human world) as a means to support wellbeing and the wellbeing of te taiao. This unit of work was created by Emma Parangi, Yasmine Slater,…
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