Every Monday morning, the children in Hub 1 are learning about mindfulness, our emotions and how to process these emotions in a healthy way.

Every second week we begin our week by learning about mindfulness.  We practice our straight back, soft belly breathing to calm our mind.  A teacher will sound the gong and we need to breathe in and out slowly and deeply until we cannot hear the gong sound anymore - then we put our hands on our heads.

We are also learning about Te Whare Tapa Whā which is about our four walls of well-being that make up our whare (house).  If one or more of the four walls are not functioning well, the whare may fall down.  The four walls are - Taha Tinana (physical well-being), Taha Whānau (social well-being), Taha Hinengaro (Emotional/Mental well-being) and Taha Wairua (Spiritual well-being).  We discussed what we can do to help improve each of the four walls of well-being to be happy and healthy.

The other week, we have been learning about our emotions and how to process them in a healthy way.  We have met our Kimochi friends who have a range of emotions and can help us learn about how to process them.  Cat is a natural born leader, but can sometimes be really bossy.  We learned how to let Cat know when she was being too bossy and also how to handle that criticism if we are like Cat and are being too bossy. 

We met Cloud, he gets angry very easily and then he hurts his friends, even though he doesn't mean to.  We learned how to help Cloud understand that it is okay to be mad but not okay to hurt your friends.  We also learned how to manage those feelings if we get angry like Cloud does.

We also met Huggtopus, she loves her friends so much that she likes to give them lots of cuddles and get into their personal bubble.  We learned how to let Huggtopus know if we do not like to be touched and we also learned how to read others body language if we are like Huggtopus and get in our friend's personal bubbles too much.   We also met Bug, he gets scared easily and doesn't like taking risks.  We learned how to process scared feelings and how to be brave and try new things.

We are also completing some elements of the KiVa programme and learning about bullying, what to do if we are being bullied or feel unsafe and how to stand up to other people that are bullying.