In my opinion, it’s never too early to teach gratitude. Studies show that expressing gratitude enhances brain function, communication skills, and confidence.
Teaching our little ones regular gratitude practices helps with social/emotional development. Cultivating mindfulness at a young age facilitates learning about emotions, expressing emotions, and understanding that having a variety of feelings/emotions is OKAY! I have found that implementing a “child friendly gratitude practice” to preschool aged students increases enjoyment of our daily activities and learning. Studies show that expressing gratitude enhances brain function, communication skills, and confidence. The children’s journal also provides the perfect opportunity to spend quiet time together w
Gratitude draws all of us into the present moment, allows us to find our fearless, speak our minds, and can help little ones find confidence in social environments.
This challenge can also provide the perfect opportunity to sit together, mindfully, and share gratitudes while developing this healthy habit.
So what is it?
Throughout the month of November I will be dropping Gratitude prompts for you to use in your speech/classroom sessions (or even with your own little ones). There will be one prompt for you and/or your adult clients, and a specific handout with a prompt for children to use.
During your sessions, you can use these prompts and handouts to facilitate a conversation or “mindful moment” around the things that make you and your clients happy and that you are grateful for. Doing this while working on communication can help foster important connections between you and your clients. The added bonus is the fact that we can be targeting language goals while doing so. For example, you can use the prompts as sentence frames for utterance expansion, narrative structure, and facilitating meaningful conversations.
When you use these prompts, get on instagram (tag @thanksmorris) or comment on this blog post and share about your experiences! Be sure to tag me so I can shout you out. Let’s get these stories out there to inspire others to build this mindful habit in their own routines!
All participants will be entered in a “gift-away” of the Say Thanks More gratitude journal bundle!
The goal for you is to use these prompts on a daily/consistent basis while encouraging your clients to practice a form of mindfulness.
Some tips to introducing these topics:
Be enthusiastic about how happy it makes you to be grateful - basically model the language of gratitude.
Get on your client’s level. This might be a challenging thing to teach because it is so abstract. So be sure you modify your language and approach as it fits your clients’ needs. For example, with my preschoolers I might teach a lesson on what kinds of things I say “thank you for”. Maybe I say thank you when my siblings/parents do things that make me happy (for a preschooler that might be making their favorite dinner, playing outside with them, etc.).
Be sure to focus on your “mindfulness topics” for as long or as short as your client enjoys them. Mindful reflection can take time to build up an attentiveness to. Maybe you start this month by having your clients draw/color a picture of something that makes them happy at the beginning of each session and work up to maybe writing/drawing 3 gratitudes by the end of the month.