Hey,
The sun is shining brightly here in Folkestone and it’s finally time to bring out the flip-flops. Hurray! I am aware some of you are teaching at state schools and are getting ready for the final exams. I bet you’re looking forward to the summer hols… Wow, now mentioning that the last time I had a proper long summer break was ten years ago when I was working in my home country. Still, I am happy with all the choices I’ve made and the path I’ve embarked on.
Thank you, everyone, for messaging me after using my new lesson for young learners THE RAINBOW. I’m so pleased that the mindful activities have brought lots of joy in your lessons. If you’ve missed this lesson plan, you can find it here.
Today I’d like to share an extra follow-up exercise I did, which was actually inspired by my students.
This is what happened.
During the lesson, sadly, most of my students admitted they'd seen this colourful arch in the sky only once or twice in their lives. And I think I know why...because most of them spend too much time indoors. So while watching them mindfully observing their rooms and searching for objects with the colours of the rainbow, see Step 5, I came up with an idea how to encourage them to go out and explore their local area. This is what I did... Last Thursday I decided to look for plants with the colours of the rainbow during my afternoon walk in the park. It was a day with sunny spells and scattered showers so I was lucky to find a dry half an hour for my mindful exploration. It turned out it was not hard at all. As the pictures illustrate, I came across: red tulips; orange English primroses; yellow buttercups; green fern; blue sea lavender, indigo violets;
violet lady orchids
I was really pleased as I had plenty of photos to prove what I'd discovered during my mindful rainbow walk and show my students some of the most popular English plants. Of course, I wasn't going to miss to tell them how I felt when touching and smelling them. So their new homework assignment is to go on a rainbow adventure in their garden or the nearest park and take pictures or draw examples of flora with the colours of the rainbow. By the way, if you believe that I wasn't lucky enough in the afternoon, then wait for this...On the way out from the supermarket later on, I spotted a beautiful rainbow in the sky... Did you see the last picture?
Last but not least, a couple of weeks ago I gave an interview for Kate Winder from "Confident Communcation". We talked about mindfulness and my new book “101 Activities to Teach English Mindfully”. You can listen to it here.
where I share more mindful teaching ideas regularly
Until we meet again, be blessed
Marusya Price
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