Movement Meditation: Connection
Movements can be powerful teachers. Our bodies remember and repeat motions associated with specific practices, such as…
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Movement Meditation: Empowerment
Being a small person in a big world can be overwhelming at times. Children may feel overshadowed by the adults around…
MoreMovement Meditation: Wonder
Children learn pretty quickly that there are often right answers and wrong answers to the questions adults ask. Those…
MoreMovement Meditation: Awareness
Being aware of one’s surroundings can be an important safety practice. We teach children to pay attention when…
MoreMovement Meditation: Empathy
Children don’t always get along. Like adults, they get angry with siblings and friends. They feel resentment and…
MoreMovement Meditation: Justice
Children long to make a difference in the world around them. From their earnest commitment to fairness as preschoolers…
MoreMovement-Enhanced Learning
Several years ago, I was leading a holiday workshop and more kids than I expected showed up. There weren’t enough…
MoreJitter Stick Spirituality
My kids have always been pretty good about settling down to do their homework. But after a half hour or so, first one…
MoreExercising Attention
It’s the usual afterschool chaos in my house. Classic rock plays loudly and all three kids are gyrating in an…
MoreUsing Movement to Reduce Trauma Responses
Numerous studies show that stress is on the rise among children. Some experts suggest that school closures and pandemic…
MorePathways to Wonder & Awe
The first time I saw flying fish, I was overcome with amazement. They looked like silvery stars twinkling in the waves…
MoreA 5E Model of Spiritual Education
One of my eldest child’s favorite memories is a series of 5th grade class sessions where they explored scientific…
MoreBooks for Women’s History Month
I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads, ‘Well-behaved women rarely make history’. It’s a reminder to myself…
MoreInward & Outward Spirituality
With many sports, after-school activities, clubs, service projects, and in some cases, in-person school canceled,…
MoreExploring Care for the Ocean with I Love You, Blue
My family lives close enough to the ocean that we can visit frequently. My children enjoy walking on the beach, playing…
MoreGuided Meditation for Peacefulness
Stress and anxiety are common occurrences in contemporary family life. Parents and children have a lot to do each day,…
MoreYoga with Children
I keep returning to yoga practice in my adult life. It provides me with a space to be present in my body and helps me…
MoreDeveloping Spiritual Persistence
I am often so excited when I begin a new spiritual practice, I expect to see immediate benefits. In my enthusiasm, I…
MoreRihanna Spirituality
Rihanna’s Super Bowl LVII performance is trending on social media. Several reviewers place it in their all-time top…
MoreGuided Meditation for Justice Seekers
Children and adults often use guided meditation to help them relax or fall asleep. A soothing voice inviting you to…
MoreContextual Engagement
Engaging children in spiritual work is a contextual experience. Yet much of our understanding about children’s…
MoreMeditation On Light
The winter months can be hard. Short days and long nights leave us longing for more sunlight. Cold temperatures chill…
MoreUsing Room Decorations to Support Spiritual Learning
The walls of my son’s pre-K classroom were covered with posters and children’s artwork. It was like walking into a…
MoreHelping Children Identify as Spiritual People
When parents name a child, they do so with high hopes that the name will somehow influence who that child becomes. If…
MoreCentering Guide
The world can be a noisy place. From the sounds of traffic in the streets, neighbors through apartment walls, Zoom…
MoreTalking with Kids about the Derek Chauvin Verdict
My family was doing our regular post-school, pre-dinner thing when the radio paused its scheduled programming to…
MoreCritical Race Theory
When the University of North Carolina declined to tenure Nikole Hannah-Jones after recruiting her for a chair in…
MoreEnvironmental Justice for Preschoolers
As global leaders gather in Glasgow to discuss climate change, one message is clear: environmental justice isn’t just…
MoreReading Fauja Singh Keeps Going
Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the 3rd Monday in January reminds us that society needs strong leaders:…
MoreSuper Mario Spirituality
The Super Mario Bros. Movie begins with the Nintendo game’s familiar theme music, a siren call to multiple…
MoreHanukkah Story Activities
Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, is an eight day celebration that recalls how a small band of ancient Jews…
MoreAffirming Neurodiversity
I was recently invited to talk with a group of interns working in non-profit settings with kids. One noted that he had…
MoreMemory Games
Almost everything we do with children involves things they need to remember. Spiritual stories have characters and…
MoreAvoiding Seductive Details
Drawing children into learning activities can sometimes feel like Sisyphus rolling an immense boulder uphill. Just when…
MoreSpiritual Brain Power
When my eldest child was three, she shocked our neighbor by explaining in detail how a refrigerator works. Amber loved…
MoreGuiding Questions for Pandemic Programming
Just when we thought it was safe to relax a little, the Omicron variant has swooped in and put pandemic debates in the…
MoreDigital Spirituality with Young Children
A friend posts a snapshot of her three year old daughter on social media. Sonia* has her head bent over her mom’s…
MoreExploring Where Wonder Grows
My dad collected rocks his whole life. He particularly liked geodes: rocks that - when broken open - contained a hidden…
MoreHelping Children Appreciate Diversity
Cleaning out my daughter’s closet, I found a shadow box she constructed in 1st grade. She and a friend set out to…
MoreGuided Meditation on Friendship
For children, Valentine’s Day is more about friendship than romance. They’re generally eager to exchange valentine…
MoreBecoming a More Reflective Leader
When I first started organizing an afterschool program for third and fourth graders, my supervisor’s advice to…
MoreGuided Meditation: Food Insecurity
“Mom, I’m hungry, and there’s nothing to eat!” my 10 year old wailed while staring into a well-stocked…
MoreGuided Meditation: Climate Change
My nephew is a science nerd. He collects facts about climate change and uses them to convince other family members to…
MoreGuided Meditation: Immigration
A few years ago, our family collected household items to help Afghan refugees relocating to our hometown. A local…
MoreGuided Meditation: Healthcare Access
When I was growing up, money was tight. My mom took my siblings and me to the city health clinic for our childhood…
MoreGuided Meditation: Housing Insecurity
Before the pandemic, churches in my city would take turns providing overnight accommodations for persons without…
MoreSpiritual Story Books
My children love to read. From a young age, they knew that I would rarely deny their request to buy a book that caught…
MoreChildren’s Spiritual Questions
“Mommy, why did Jennifer* get cancer?” This probing question from my nine year old daughter caught me off guard.…
MoreUnbundled Spirituality
Once upon a time, families turned almost exclusively to religious congregations to meet their spiritual needs. They…
MoreHow Spirituality Shapes Imagination
The other day I spread out a play mat for a friend’s four-year-old son and gave him a few hot wheels. He started the…
MoreCollective Spiritual Conversations
Often our interactions with children center around questions like “What did you learn? Or “How did that happen?”…
MoreSpiritual Counseling
For many children, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of trauma, grief, and loss. Even if children have come through…
MoreExploring Spiritual Traditions through Objects
One of my grown daughters will only drink grape juice if she has bread to dip in it. It’s a throwback to her…
MoreWays to Check Understanding
A common way to check whether children have understood something is to give a test. But even in schools, teachers are…
MoreReimagining Spiritual Education
Most of the time, we think of the global pandemic as a terrible time for children and learning. School closures, fights…
MoreUsing Story Circles to Build Empathy
Sorting through a box of old school papers, I found a story one of my children wrote in 2nd grade. Her teacher had…
MoreEmoji Spirituality
Kids love emojis. As fun visual substitutes for words, they help children share how they’re feeling and communicate…
MoreCueing Spiritual Language
When my son was learning about lower case letters, he got into an argument with his preschool teacher about the letter…
MoreCelebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Reading books about Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than an annual event when my children were young. We had several,…
MoreExploring Emotion with Crying is Like the Rain
Children’s feelings can shift and change rapidly. One minute a toddler is happily playing and the next they’re…
MoreTaylor Swift Spirituality
With her latest album sweeping the top 10 slots on Billboard’s Top 100 - a first for any artist - Taylor Swift is…
MoreBuilding a Strong Image of Children
Sometimes when we talk about children, we focus on what kids can’t do: they can’t walk yet, or they can’t reach…
MoreConnecting with Nature through My Friend Earth
Learning about the seasons of the year is a common focus in many preschool and elementary programs. My Friend Earth,…
MoreDreaming with Dreamers
Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales, follows a mother and her young child as they immigrate to the United States and begin to…
MoreAcknowledging Hurt & Making Amends
Yom Kippur, the annual Jewish Day of Atonement, begins the evening of Sunday, September 24. It is a time for deep…
MoreExploring Teamwork with Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie
Preparing for a family get-together, I gave each child a different job. My youngest collected cups and my third…
MoreMaking Belonging a Priority
Three weeks after my middle child started third grade, she was so anxious and upset that she couldn’t concentrate on…
MoreExploring Change with Where is Home, Daddy Bear?
My family moved when I was a child. For the first 6 months, I refused to call the new house ‘home’. I did not want…
MoreImagining a Better World with Wish
“Why do bad things happen?” asks my son. That question is hard enough to answer, but he doesn’t stop there. He…
MoreCreating a Calming Corner
December can be an overwhelming month for kids. Seasonal changes prompt a shift in clothing and outdoor activities.…
MoreDreaming about Racial Equity with Kids
During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2021, my home city (Richmond, VA) struggled with the legacy of several…
MoreKids, Ramadan & Food Insecurity
As the war between Israel and Palestine continues, many Palestinian parents struggle to feed their families. Violence…
MoreChildren’s Resistance to Spirituality
Children, like adults, vary in their attraction to spirituality. Some revel in many different kinds of experiences,…
MoreLearning about Self & Others with The Garfield Movie
We often wonder what pets are thinking and feeling, especially when they do something that seems odd or silly. A cat…
MoreExploring Community Change with The Artivist
Recently, my children were discussing who might have made their clothes. We have talked about child labor in factories,…
MorePracticing Humility
Psychologists suggest that true humility is not about making oneself smaller to please others, but being able to share…
MoreExploring Diversity with The Only Way to Make Bread
Bread is a diet staple. It comes in many forms, from rye loaves and buttermilk biscuits to focaccia and tortillas.…
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