Building Self-Understanding with Self-Talk
When she was three, my middle daughter loved to play dolls with her friends. They would reenact various everyday…
MorePosts tagged: Reflection
Paying Close Attention to Kids
At my daughter’s sixth birthday party, she invited her friends to decorate pots and plant marigolds. I watched as one…
MoreActivating Social-Emotional Learning Skills
The beginning of a new school year is marked with excitement and anxiety. It’s a transition point, which requires…
MoreExploring Values through Cultural ‘Holidays’
Pop up a digital calendar and you’ll likely see a host of cultural ‘holidays’ created to encourage local,…
MoreMeaningful End-of-Year Recognition
Awards ceremonies are often a major event at the end of a program year. Some children eagerly await them, secure in the…
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…
MoreHoliday ‘Marker Talks’
Many of the children I teach come from households that celebrate multiple religious and cultural holidays. Others have…
MoreExploring Family Relationships with Trolls Band Together
Movies and commercials often highlight traditional families and focus on the joys of being together. But real families…
MoreReflecting on Our Work with Kids
The start of a new school year means many program leaders are scrambling to build relationships with new children and…
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 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…
MoreRemembering Wars & Warriors with Children
“I found it mom, I found it!” called my daughter. ‘It’ was her great-uncle’s name on the Vietnam Veterans…
MoreBecoming a More Reflective Leader
When I first started organizing an afterschool program for third and fourth graders, my supervisor’s advice to…
MoreExploring Ramadan
Six years ago, I visited Istanbul with two of my children. We were there during Ramadan, which meant we observed…
MoreAddressing Empathy Deficits
“Jamal is icky. He walks with a limp and talks funny.” “Suzanne is so stupid! She looks weird, too.” Such…
MoreFamily Solstice Celebrations
When my children were young, a family friend invited us to a winter solstice party. There were sparklers and glow…
MoreHoliday Lights Scavenger Hunt
I love holiday lights! Strings of colored bulbs wrapped around trees, icicle lights hanging from rooftops and fences, a…
MoreExploring Emotions with The Coat
Hand-me-downs can be a dreaded necessity or longed-for acquisition. I remember being crestfallen when a neighbor passed…
MoreCultivating Intellectual Humility
“Saying something doesn’t make it so.” My grandmother would issue this reminder whenever my siblings or I would…
MoreWhy Kids Need Silence
As a parent, I used to be suspicious of silence. If I wasn’t hearing sounds from the next room, I would wonder what…
MoreReflecting on Lyle, Lyle Crocodile with Kids
Lyle, Lyle Crocodile offers several big songs and dance scenes that will engage and excite young moviegoers. But…
MoreNurturing a Flexible Mindset
“But mom, you don’t understand! Practice ran over and now the internet is down and I can’t get to the language…
MoreYom Kippur
Fall brings two major Jewish holidays: Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), which is…
MoreExploring Community Justice with Unfadeable
In Unfadeable, Bella Fades is a fierce tween girl who loves her community and wants to see it thrive. Her strong belief…
MoreTeaching Spiritual Discourse
One of parents’ greatest fears is that others will indoctrinate their children with ideas that don’t match their…
MoreVisible Spiritual Thinking
My kids used to love puzzles that involved figuring out an unknown object from a close-up photo. They developed a set…
MoreReading What Do You Do with a Chance?
Taking chances is risky. Some children can’t wait to explore the unknown. Others prefer familiar structures and…
MoreExploring Magic Candies with Children
Imagine a bag of candies with the power to bring your sofa to life and give voice to falling leaves. Would you want to…
MoreCelebrating Self-Discovery
As the regular school year draws to a close, many extracurricular programs also pause for the summer. Teachers and…
MoreDaily Intentions
Setting small spiritual goals each day is one way that children can take responsibility for their own moral and ethical…
MoreHelping Children Set Meaningful Goals
Purpose is an important aspect of a healthy spiritual life. Children have hopes and dreams. They want to make a…
MoreSpiritual Reflection with Turning Red
Pixar’s newest release is a coming-of-age story about a Chinese Canadian girl accepting both her changing body and…
MoreExploring For Beautiful Black Boys Who Believe in a Better World
Like many parents, Michael W. Waters looked at his newborn son and thought him the most beautiful baby on earth. He…
MoreSpiritual Storytelling with The Last Cuentista
For a book lover like me, one bedtime story often turned into two or three as I tucked my young children in. But I…
MoreReimagining Spiritual Education
Most of the time, we think of the global pandemic as a terrible time for children and learning. School closures, fights…
MoreCreating a Sacred Healing Space
The last two years have been incredibly difficult. Children, as well as adults, have struggled to find spiritual…
MoreReflecting with Spiderman: No Way Home
When my oldest child was 4, he begged to have his face painted as Spiderman. But when he saw his new face in the…
MoreSpiritual Reflection with Encanto
Encanto, Disney’s newest animated feature, tells the story of an extraordinary family. Once upon a time, Abuela…
MoreTeaching Tough Topics
Ruth Wills doesn’t believe in shying away from tough topics with children. A few years ago, she developed a method…
MoreChange Sings
Social change can be scary for children (and adults). Much of parenting young children involves teaching them to obey…
MoreReflecting on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
During quarantine, my family watched all of the Marvel movies in chronological order. It was one of the few series…
MorePublic Learning
The common idea that spirituality is a private matter creates a dilemma for organizations that partner with families…
MorePublic Learning Reflective Process
For teachers and program facilitators who want to be reflective practitioners, Mills College School of Education…
MoreTelling Personal Stories
Hearing others’ stories and telling one’s own is a powerful way for children to connect spiritually. Personal…
MoreDecision Matrix
Learning to make good decisions is an essential spiritual skill. Becoming a self-reflective person requires children to…
MorePandemic Reflection Activities
As many places lift pandemic restrictions, children need ways to look back over the past 15 months and reflect on their…
MoreUsing Landscape Images in Spiritual Reflection
My youngest child loves Van Gogh’s Starry Night. In fifth grade, he picked out a t-shirt that had Albert Einstein’s…
MoreFamily Spiritual Rules
Family spiritual rules are a little like superhero codes of conduct: they outline our values and the activities we…
MorePracticing Presence
Learning to be attentive to the spiritual aspects of life takes time and practice. From the time we are preschoolers,…
MoreExamining Our Conscience
Many cultural and religious traditions have some kind of spiritual practice that involves reflecting on one’s…
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