After a long summer, with a lot of adventures and new discoveries, I am about to go on the next trip!
This time the project takes me to Amman, in Jordan. I will be again partnering with Child of Play, to develop one more incredible project about children's rights. And I couldn't be more excited!!
And while I am preparing, I couldn't stop but thinking about my previous visits. On the last project, in Düsseldorf, time was quite short to visit classes as often as I did in other schools, which is why I couldn't really write about strategies I've seen put in place. I did however play a game with the primary school kids, during one of the activities, that I thought was very very interesting!
The whole dynamic starts as a circle, where everyone sits side by side. The goal of the game is to reach a certain number - which is decided at the beginning - by counting progressively. The interesting twist of the game is that while there may be many kids on the circle, each person can only say one number during the whole round and they should never say it at the same time as another player.
This means that not only are we working on concentration, we are also working on awareness of others and their own timings, memorization, group work and tranquility. It's not a "fast and furious" kind of game. On the contrary! Each player needs to be very focused, very calm and very observing to make sure they don't speak at the same time as another colleague. Because of course, if they do, the counting starts over.
And I saw how much this game calmed the children down, while giving them a fun and motivating activity. I thought this was such a good idea for an overly-active group of elementary school kids in need of calming down.
What about you? Have you ever tried this, or other calming techniques, in your classroom? Feel free to share them in the comments bellow! :)
This time the project takes me to Amman, in Jordan. I will be again partnering with Child of Play, to develop one more incredible project about children's rights. And I couldn't be more excited!!
And while I am preparing, I couldn't stop but thinking about my previous visits. On the last project, in Düsseldorf, time was quite short to visit classes as often as I did in other schools, which is why I couldn't really write about strategies I've seen put in place. I did however play a game with the primary school kids, during one of the activities, that I thought was very very interesting!
The whole dynamic starts as a circle, where everyone sits side by side. The goal of the game is to reach a certain number - which is decided at the beginning - by counting progressively. The interesting twist of the game is that while there may be many kids on the circle, each person can only say one number during the whole round and they should never say it at the same time as another player.
This means that not only are we working on concentration, we are also working on awareness of others and their own timings, memorization, group work and tranquility. It's not a "fast and furious" kind of game. On the contrary! Each player needs to be very focused, very calm and very observing to make sure they don't speak at the same time as another colleague. Because of course, if they do, the counting starts over.
And I saw how much this game calmed the children down, while giving them a fun and motivating activity. I thought this was such a good idea for an overly-active group of elementary school kids in need of calming down.
What about you? Have you ever tried this, or other calming techniques, in your classroom? Feel free to share them in the comments bellow! :)