CLASSROOM Grades 4 - 6 | Week Seven | The Panda Bear
Or, Jump To:
Week One - The Owl Week Two - The Guard Dog Week Three - The Hippo Week Four - The Monkey Week Five - The Elephant Week Six - The Dolphin Week Eight - The Pig
Subject: Gratitude - The Panda Bear
Requirements: You will need internet access and a laptop, tablet or smartphone for accessing this content. You will need a wired or Bluetooth connection to a speaker to amplify the audio into the classroom. You DO NOT need a screen or projector as each lesson is audio only from your device and requires students to close their eyes and/or focus on their Belly Buddy.
Step One: The DIY Belly Buddy Crafting Project - The Panda Bear
As with last week, it is recommended that the children start this week’s lesson with the activity of making their own “Panda Bear” Belly Buddy. For the Classroom version of this program it is recommended that students draw their belly buddy animal on a sheet of paper. The finished drawing can be placed on the student’s desk and used as a focal point during the meditation. Teachers may choose to tie this drawing activity to Art Education Curriculum Expectations. Drawings can be placed in a duo tang and stored in students’ desks. A favourite tool to assist students with their artwork is Art For Kids Hub
Art for Kids Hub - Art Lessons - How to Draw for Kids
As an alternative to drawing a picture, teachers may choose to have students create the toilet paper roll animal that is used during the bedtime version of the program. Click here for toilet paper animal template.
Step Two: Soundcheck - 30 seconds
Before beginning The Panda Bear Lesson and Meditation, play the Sound Check file below to ensure your speakers are working correctly and that all students can hear the audio effectively. This also serves as a way to get the students to settle down, be still, and prepare to listen.
Step Three: Discuss Last Week’s Mindful Challenge
Discuss with students their success and challenges with last week’s Mindful Challenge
Last Week’s Mindful Challenge: Practice sending wishes for health, happiness, peace, love…to someone special and notice how this feels in the mind and body.
The following questions may help you prompt the discussion:
Did anyone remember to send Loving Kindness to someone special last week?
Would anyone like to share who they sent their kind wishes to?
Did you notice anything in your body when you sent Loving Kindness to a special someone?
How did your mind feel when you sent these kind wishes?
Do you think that sending Loving Kindness could be helpful if you are feeling sad, mad or lonely?
Step Four: Play The Panda Bear Lesson & Meditation - 7 minutes
Now that the Sound Check is complete, you will play the Lesson below. Listen and learn with your students!
Step Five: Meditation Reflection - 5+ minutes
Here are some questions to drive follow up discussion. There are no wrong answers!
Does anyone want to share what they said thank you for with their thinking mind during today’s meditation?
How did your body feel when you practiced being thankful?
Was there a spot in your body where you could notice more feelings/sensations when you practiced being thankful (for example, triggered a smile on face, tingling in the chest)?
Put up your hand if you can tell me the word you were asked to remember during the Panda session. (Neuroplasticity)
Can anyone guess what this word means? (One can think of the brain and its neuroplasticity as being a bit like plasticine. Plasticine is a type of modelling clay that you can shape in different ways, and you can reshape again and again. Not so long ago, scientists thought that once a person was a fully grown adult, their brain didn’t change much after that, but now we know this is not true. Even though the brain stops physically growing larger by your early 20s, because of the special cells in the brain called neurons, your brain keeps changing forever.
Every time we practice doing a new skill again and again, our brain creates new neural pathways that will help us to get better at this skill. The same is true for thankfulness, the more we practice being thankful, the easier it will be for our brain to spot the things we are thankful for. So essentially we can create new thankfulness pathways in our brains. When we create new thankfulness pathways in our brain, it becomes easier to spot even more things that we are thankful for. When we are feeling thankful we are less likely to feel sad, worried and bored.
Step Six: Mindful Challenge
Remind students of this week’s Mindful Challenge: Each morning choose three small things you are thankful for and then close your eyes and picture those things close to you in your mind as you lie in your bed. Say thank you for these special things with your thinking mind and notice how your body, mind and heart feel.
Step Seven: Daily Meditation - 6 minutes - Various Times During the Week
With the audio lesson complete, you are encouraged to take time during the balance of the week to practice with students the guided meditation/s below (the Panda Bear Belly Buddy craft is not required for these practices). The ‘Daily Meditations’ are in support of each week’s lesson, but you can come back to them as often as you like. Typically they are 3 - 6 minutes each. These meditations are also included as a part of the Bedtime Program (accessed through the Bedtime Program students sign up for with their FREE Promo Code) and students are encouraged to practice one per night at bedtime. It is recommended that Parents/Guardians practice along with their child and then build onto this practice by participating in the Parent program.
This meditation is a useful tool to help settle students after a recess, lunch break, or physical activity.
Step Eight - Additional Activities (Optional)
JOURNAL
It may not be hard to be thankful for the happy and positive things in our lives, but what about a difficult or ‘bad’ experience? Perhaps one that you did not have a lot of control over.
Write about a challenging or difficult experience that you are now thankful for. Consider how this experience helped you to learn an important lesson or grow stronger in a valuable way.
DEEP DIVE LEARNING QUESTIONS ( BASED ON YOUR STUDENTS’ READINESS, PLEASE SELECT FROM THE QUESTIONS BELOW TO PROMPT A MORE IN-DEPTH BRAIN SCIENCE CLASS DISCUSSION)
Q: What is another word for being thankful?
A: Gratitude
Q: Why would we want to practice gratitude or thankfulness everyday?
A: Practicing gratitude everyday changes the brain in positive ways.
A gratitude practice helps calm the body
Opens the door to the brain’s wise leader (PFC) so that we can think more clearly, make good decisions, be kinder to ourselves and others
This practice increases our interest in learning and determination to reach our goals
It helps us to feel happier
It increases the health of the body and brain
Trains the brain to be on the lookout for more things to be thankful for
Q: Is it possible to practice being fearful, negative and ungrateful?
A: Yes, when we focus our attention on fearful, negative and ungrateful thoughts and we do this over and over again we create new neural pathways in our brains. So if you practice attaching fearful thoughts to an experience, such as taking a test or raising your hand in front of the class, eventually the fear becomes automatic. Just like tying your shoes or bouncing a ball feels automatic after a lot of practice, thinking fearful thoughts will feel automatic when you consider writing a test or raising your hand in front of the class.
In fact our brain's natural tendency is to look for what’s negative, what’s missing and what’s wrong. This is how the brain evolved to help protect us. We once lived in very dangerous environments and if we were to survive our brain had to be on the lookout for any threats or dangers. Now that we no longer live in a world with saber tooth tigers, the “negativity bias” of the brain is not as helpful to us, and instead can be harmful and prevent us from feeling positive and happy and can sometimes stop us from doing those things that will help us to grow and flourish as individuals.
Reshaping our brain and creating positive neural pathways does take a bit of work and you may feel that it is quite challenging. If you notice that it feels difficult, that’s okay, please do not put yourself down or judge yourself harshly, remember that you are working to change something about the brain that evolved over thousands of years. So be kind and patient with yourself. Just do your best to be mindful of your fearful, negative thoughts. When you notice you are having negative and fearful thoughts, spot the thought, consider whether these thoughts are helpful in this moment and if they are not, try switching gears to a more positive thinking pattern by thinking of something you are thankful for.