FUN!!! With Kids & Worms
Everything you’ve always wanted to know about worms, and more! Create your own worm composting bin. Learn about the important jobs worms do for us. Talk about garbage!
Last Stop on Market Street
Use this award-winning picture book to help young kids talk about the serious issues we face in our communities. “Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt, CJ, you’re a better witness for what is beautiful.”
Teacher Perspectives|Settle Down
“Breathing exercises get them back on track,” she says. She decided to try teaching her students controlled breathing techniques and now uses a breathing exercise for a few minutes after recess each day.
Teacher Perspectives|Take a Break
“I have 25 kiddos. I just feel like, as a teacher, I have to help all of them – including that one child whose struggles with focus or emotional regulation result in classroom behaviors. When they are stressed, their behaviors can escalate quickly.”
Glitter Jar
Glitter is not my favorite. I try to keep it out of our home, but it’s getting more difficult. Not only do my kids bring it home on art projects, but I didn’t realize how glittery it would be to have a daughter! Glitter on shoes, shirts, pants, backpacks, notebooks, and toys. Glitter that finds its way into every corner of every room of our house. I can count on glitter in the dustpan when I sweep the floors.
As much as I complain about glitter, I do appreciate Glitter Jars. They are simple to make – add water and food coloring to an upcycled water bottle. Add glitter and shake. Glitter swirls around in every direction, like a sparkly, colorful snow globe, it’s mesmerizing.
Sometimes my mind feels like that snow globe–thoughts dart in every direction. To-do lists, work requests, full mail boxes, and I do mean plural with voicemails, emails and paper mail. Family commitments on top of it all make me forget why I walked into a room, and wonder what I meant with a calendar entry.
From well-intentioned extra-curricular activities to technology distractions, I know kids feel it too. When I’m teaching, I wonder why I need to repeat directions times or explain concepts yet again. But then I remember that their young minds are distracted just like mine. And they’ve learned fewer tools to cope.
Life doesn’t have to be so jumbled up. Though swirling glitter is fun to watch, it eventually settles. Just so, as I sit mesmerized by the Glitter Jar, my mind focuses and my thoughts slow.
The education team at Next Step is developing a variety of Mindfulness & Movement resources for educators. In the next month we’ll roll out–
- A collection of cards outlining 5-minute activities to help kids in classrooms and at home focus their thoughts and balance their emotions.
- We’ll offer workshops and coaching to help you integrate these and other strategies into your classroom or family life.
- And we have a trained team that’s ready to bring Mindfulness and Movement to the kids you work with, in or out of school. Urbandale’s Adventuretime program is the first to schedule this program.
Like the Glitter Jar that settles with just a few minutes of stillness, some mindful moments can turn an overwhelming classroom or household into a refuge of calm. Sometimes a small change is all we need to make for a big impact.
New Year Priority
Time and again I’ve started a New Year’s Resolution and by the end of January my enthusiasm to keep the resolution has all but fizzled out. Maybe some of you have experienced this tiresome cycle.
This year I’m trying to combat the cycle by hitching my resolution to my yoga practice. Since I do yoga as often as I can, I figured this would help me in carry out my new priority.
First, you need to know a few things about me. I like to accomplish tasks quickly and efficiently at the expense of neatness and 
tidiness. Picture a closet gushing with scarves, slippers and hats, or finding a lotion bottle with the cleaning supplies. This of course is not the way to a clean and tidy house, and in the end will probably cost me more time in the hunt than it would to put the item away properly.
Like the items exploding from the closet, this is a part of my mind I don’t want to face. Taking time to intentionally put things where they need to go (clothes in the dresser not on the floor!) means a complete rewiring of my brain. This, my friends, is where yoga comes into the picture.
One essential part of yoga is connecting the mind with every movement. When I am practicing I make thoughtful and intentional choices in each position that suit my body. Taking the extra moment to connect mind to body is what makes my yoga practice so beneficial.
One day I realized this intentional mind set is what I was lacking at home. Since then I’ve started taking some extra time to connect my intentions of a clean house to my actions. This means I’ve started to place things in their designated spots instead of leaving them in random places. I still have moments of relapse but every time I go back to yoga I reconnect with my priority.
It has not been easy but I have seen growth in myself and have gained the extra time spent cleaning when I go to find something and it’s in the right spot!
Lessons for Harvest Time
Gardening gets kids excited about how things grow. Use time in the garden to apply math concepts, and experience wonder. To wonder so much you want to read, ask questions and read some more.
Gotta Have a Coach
Over the last four years or so, I’ve let my backyard get more than a little overgrown. One reason–an Amur Maple that we planted the first spring I lived here took a huge hit in an early snow storm. I wept over that tree the next morning when I found every branch either broken or split down the middle from the heavy snow on leaves that were just turning red-orange. 
Losing that maple turned my shade garden into the sunniest part of the yard. I had to move the hostas, lungwort and other shade-lovers to the back where some trees had grown up. I admit to putting things in hastily so I could concentrate on the “public” part of the yard.
Tim and I spent three seasons moving rose bushes from the back to the front, finding a ginkgo tree and replacing a couple very old yews with a boxwood hedge. Last August I finally exhaled deeply and thought, “this is what I imagined it would look like.”
Through it all, my garden coach Anne Larson helped me along. She commiserated and encouraged when the maple died. She was available by phone as we shopped for the ginkgo. Just a couple weeks ago she nudged me to move a viburnum “just two feet” and that made all the difference in a grouping of shrubs along the east fence.
Anne helps me make my garden more beautiful and resilient, and even suggests ways to make it less work. 
Choosing plants that can withstand the extremes of Iowa winters and summers, wet and dry can make life much less stressful.
Last week when I said something about my garden coach to Eric “Only you would have a garden coach” was his reaction. But you know, my garden means a lot to me and it wouldn’t be nearly as great without my coach. We offer coaching services here at Next Step, and really it’s the very same thing as in the garden–encouragement, support, help with decision-making and problem-solving, communication.
Coaches are great. Get a coach. You’ll love it.
There’s Always More
So many reasons to be excited about yoga. I teach it. I practice it. I study it. There truly is always more!
Excited–check out this article about some preliminary research on how yoga may help with recovery from stroke and lessening the impact of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
I teach at Shakti Yoga Shop and we have some very cool opportunities coming up this fall. Desiree Rumbaugh is bringing her Wisdom Warriors training here in September. She developed it a few years ago when she turned 50 (you’d never guess it). Then, a couple weeks later, Becky and I will do our Intro to Yoga class.
I’m all set to head to the Finger Lakes region of New York for my second visit to Dr. Douglas Brooks’ summer camp. I’ve rented a “cottage in the woods” to retreat to all by myself after days of listening to stories of Rajanaka, the very tiny branch of Hinduism that we study with Douglas.
Looking forward to curry dinner at Douglas’ place and at least a short conversation with his talented and beautiful wife Susan. Four of us are going this year from Des Moines. We will be a force to be reckoned with.
This time studying with Douglas and friends will provide material for my paintings that are also reflections on my trips to India, the stories and philosophy we explore.
Puja at Rajanaka summer camp
Practice–I’ve been lazy about having a home practice. I go to class or teach nearly every day, so why do I need to get on my mat at home? Well, yesterday I made a commitment to do just that.
I took just a few minutes after a walk to stretch my hamstrings and quads and root the head of my femurs deep into the hip sockets. Then I stood on my head for a few minutes. Felt great. But I’ll need to do it again today to really start making it a habit.
The study of yoga–there’s always more. Come along on the adventure!
Make Art. Cats Do
It’s winter in Iowa. An odd winter, but winter nonetheless. No snow to speak of; temperatures vacillating wildly from single digits to 40s and 50s. Yesterday an ice storm hit, but today temperatures in the 30s have melted it all away. No winter wonderland for us; we’re yearning for sunshine or snow to color gray winter days. I’m not the only one in the house with cabin fever.
The cats have started doing art projects. This morning Rosy created the slipper piece, artfully arranging one of her catnip toys in my sheepskin slipper on the carpet by the front door.
Several days ago my daughter sent me a photo of her cat Silvia’s work in her food bowl.
Tater continues to refine a fiber piece on the arm of our favorite brocade chair, in spite of consistent and considerable discouragement. Art Critics!
I have a book called Why Cats Paint: A theory of feline aesthetics. I tried to get my cat Bitsy to paint a number of years ago, with limited success. Cats are famously independent after all.
She did check out the pastels and help me watercolor. I’m pretty sure I have some samples of her work tucked away in my drawer for refrigerator-quality projects. But now that Silvia and Rosy are showing real promise, I will definitely be organizing some cat-friendly studio space.
If cats can make art, we certainly can! Get over any fear that you “can’t draw” or that you’re “not creative.” Get out that yarn, those beads and baubles, tissue paper, scissors and brushes. Clear away the clutter and paint your world. It may be winter, but we don’t have to be stuck with gray and white!
