Calming Tool Corner

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate!

Friday was a Professional Activity Day for us and, as usual, I planned to accomplish a lot more than I was able to do. Darn! On Sunday, we hosted Thanksgiving Dinner for my parents, brother, and mother-in-law. As the deacon mentioned in his homily at church earlier that morning, these holidays can be a source of stress.

Stress is something that even young children need to learn how cope with and address. I notice that each year, it feels like students struggle more with how to regulate their emotions and transport themselves into a state where it is optimal for learning. Unfortunately, there's no "magic potion" that can quickly and automatically solve these problems. Occasionally, it's an event that has happened outside the teacher's control (such as an incident at recess or at home) that dis-regulates students and the impact can last much longer than the trigger.

One method I've been experimenting with to help students calm themselves down is by providing a "calming tool" area. If students are feeling stressed or dis-regulated, they can grab one of these items to help them regain their composure. I've added a few new items this year. I thought it might be a helpful exercise to list what I have, consider how it sometimes helps and brainstorm what more I can do.

On the left is a toy that my son obtained long ago and was no longer interested in keeping. When you turn it upside-down, the liquids bubble and flow into the other compartments. Students can watch the colours merge into the others and switch spots.

On the right is a toddler puzzle that involves different kinds of locks. Users can unhook, twist, unlatch and tinker with the various closures to reveal what's behind the doors and covers.

To the left is one of my fabric fidget mazes. Lisa Noble taught me how to make a fidget maze at the ECOO BIT18 conference in Niagara Falls and since then I've made dozens and dozens of them. There is a small bead sewn inside the square and users can find the bead and work it between all the paths created by the stitched words and shapes.




To the right is a gadget that I don't know the official name of - the Sonsuh website says it's a "tangle brain tool". It can be snapped apart and together and shaped into different configurations. I bought it recently along with some "Boinks" (which I forgot to take a photo of) - a simple tool consisting of a mesh tube with a marble stitched inside. People can push the marble up and down the tube while feeling the texture of the material that encases the marble.

 To the left are two Koosh balls. I own a lot of Koosh balls but in the past, I never left them out for student use. (Students can be very rough with my supplies, as my earless and horn-shredded unicorn toys can attest!) Koosh are not as easy to purchase as they used to be but I like them because even hard throws will not hurt someone if they are hit. I bought a new Koosh to add to my collection and deliberately left the price tag on it so students would be aware about how much the items they use actually cost, in the hopes that they will use it more carefully and appreciate the presence of it in the school library learning commons. (This topic is somewhat related to my Treasure Mountain Canada think tank paper - read more about that in a few months.)




To the right are Yankee Candle car air fresheners in little mock plastic jars. My students really like taking them and inhaling the scent deeply. Farah Wadia, our Grade 7-8 teacher, has a much more environmentally friendly way to use smell to help her students become more tranquil; she has fresh mint, lemongrass or lavender that she crushes and has available for her students. These scent jars are so popular that some have been stolen from the library.

Below is a colouring book. I'm not a fan of making colouring pages a mandatory task during instructional time - there's so many more enriching activities that students can partake in as part of school (see this link - if I can find it before the blog post goes live - about how we could be doing so much more than just holiday-related arts and crafts - ETA: thank you Aviva Dunsiger for the link!) but this colouring book is an available option for students to use to settle their emotions down. It's a popular recess time activity for some students; however, this option is the most contentious of my choices for calming down during class time. I had a pair of Grade 2 students who really, really like to colour and draw as a way for them to calm down - but they get so into the colouring (and chatting with each other as they colour) during the lesson that they end up distracting others and tuning out of the lesson that they claim they'll listen to as they colour. (Giving them reminders and then asking them to put their colouring away for 5 minutes led one student to crumple up and destroy the drawing she had been creating just minutes prior.)

Many of these "tools" are used as "toys" during recess and that's okay. I try to use the term "tools" so that students understand that they aren't to be used as a way to tune out the teacher during a lesson but help them refocus. Many of these tools are visual, olfactory, or tactile. (I didn't include the flexible seating like the wobbly chairs or bean bag chair, but they can count too.) Auditory tools are a little trickier because I still want students to attend to a piece of the lesson while they recoup their well-being. (I ordered noise-cancelling headphones with some of my Scholastic Book Fair money - time will tell if those were a good pick.)

Farah and other classroom teachers also use mindful techniques such as guided breathing and relaxation exercises with their students. I don't use those techniques as much, even though they are very calming, because as a specialist teacher with only 40 minutes, I don't always have the luxury of time and it is, more often than not, just a couple of students that need calming down instead of the whole group. (I feel guilty typing those previous words because of the phrase "what's necessary for some is beneficial for all" and everyone can get something positive out of a meditation session.) Maybe I need to reconsider my position on whole-group relaxation.

My husband shakes his head and wonders aloud at the current state of society when many students need the equivalent of a pacifier to soothe themselves. I am curious about the causes but more concerned with addressing the issues - recently I had a Grade 4 student crawl under his desk and refuse to come out; when I was finally able to coax him out and talk to him, he explained that he was upset because "someone took his answer" during a short class discussion. That response doesn't feel typical in a junior division class, especially because there already exist structures and routines that allow for dealing with this particular phenomenon (patting yourself on the chest when the answer is given publicly demonstrates to the teacher and the rest of the class that you, the student, had the same idea that was just presented). Having said that, I can either metaphorically "curse the rain" or "bring an umbrella". Bring out the umbrellas, the rain boots and rain coats - mental health and well-being is important and needs to be dealt with thoughtfully and sensitively. Wish us luck in the journey.