Mindfulness! I explain to kids that I see mindfulness as "awareness" - of your mind, your body, and environment. Mindfulness is anchored by slow breathing, which helps us slow our minds and our bodies down. Once calm and focused, mindfulness is easily practiced by focusing on the senses. Sight - mindfully observing what is around you; taking notice of the things all around us that we normally take for granted. Hearing - closing your eyes and noticing the constant backdrop of noise that accompanies us; picking out individual sounds from the hum. Tasting - eating mindfully, paying attention to texture and flavor. Touch - anchoring yourself in place by rubbing your feet on the floor, massaging your hands, feeling the texture of your clothes or your pencil between your fingers. Smell - observing with your nose the qualities of the air. 

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We often tend to drift through our days without thinking. We lean on routines; we walk past the same things every day and we cease to really experience those things. I sometimes do an exercise in class where we pick out three things we see in the classroom. Kids who have spent months in the space notice a plethora of things they didn't notice before: the texture of the tile on the ceiling; a sign their teacher has had up all year; a particular facial feature of a classmate. Our brains gloss over such things because there is too much sensory input for our minds to handle it all, and yet it is so important to practice being mindful and present. To "stop and smell the roses," so to speak. 

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