From the Health & Wellbeing Classroom

Prep

Prep have been learning so many valuable strategies to help understand their feelings and how we can be great friends, great learners and feel great within! While the Zones of Regulation have been our main focus, we have had two lessons focusing on emotional regulation- specifically with ‘up regulating’ and ‘down regulating’. The children are learning that sometimes when we feel in the blue zone (sad, lonely, disappointed, tired), one of our strategies to come out of the blue zone, is to ‘upregulate’. This could include physical movement, sensory input, and engaging activities that stimulate the mind. On the flip side, when we are feeling like we are in the yellow zone, whether stressed/ angry or hyper/ silly, we sometimes need to ‘downregulate’. This is more calming activities, such as reading, quiet focus play (puzzles/ LEGO etc), breathing techniques, and so on. The children are beginning to understand these techniques and the language is becoming part of their everyday life, in order to be able to become emotionally regulated in those tricky times.