Category: Classroom

Help your child ready with Lazy 8 breathing

Lazy 8

Lazy 8 breathing technique for calming. Attached is a great printable to help students with their breathing using the Brain Gym Lazy 8. I see a lot of children with reading issues that are really breathing issues. Sounds funny but when children begin to read they are asked to read aloud. Our ability to read aloud is different to the ability to read to ourselves. We are often much calmer reading to ourselves where it doesn’t matter if we make a mistake or read a word thats not there. The flow of our reading is not stopped all the time with someone correcting us all the time. Imagine the stress some kids have reading a loud.

If your child is struggling with reading aloud, watch and listen to their breathing. If they are holding their breath or seem out of breath you need to find a way to help the calm down. Its obviously stressful.

One technique I used on my son was to have him march up and down the hall before homework reading. This worked for a while because it was new and seemed fun. This technique was using the Brain Gym Cross Crawl movement I described last week. As kids get older its not as easy to get them to do these things even though it helps. My son’s issue is that he can’t process the words as fast as he is required to read it. He sees the words and freezes. Holds his breath and gets frustrated he can’t find the words to say them out loud. Its not that he can’t read but that he cannot say them without delay like he is expected to. Its therefore stressful. Now he is older he works on his breathing but he is a boy. He doesn’t always do what is best. He doesn’t want to be different.

Brain Gym assist with finding the right method to build the physical skills we need for learning. The sooner these skills are developed the less stress they cause.

Let me know if this helps your child. If your child is stills struggling maybe I can help with another skill.

Kerri Bainbridge

Educational Kinesiologist/ 0210781336/ bainbridgeka@gmail.com

Resources: Lazy 8 breathing

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Hook upsNelson Central School- Nurture group

I have been using Brain Gym in my Nurture Group (5-6 year olds) for the last couple of terms.  I only have to think back to those first few days of explaining the different parts of Brain Gym to my little group of five to see how far we have come. Initially we struggled with the different exercises but once we broke it down and focused on one exercise at a time we soon mastered it! We now start every session following along with Kerri in her you tube video (www.braingymnelson.co.nz/pace).

The children are now in such a routine. The first thing they do is get themselves a glass of water and then we are ready to start. Once we get to the hook up and see I seem them all laying there relaxed and calm, I feel my self welling up with pride. The difference in their attention and focus is incredible. I’ve also noticed that if the classroom has been especially busy and we take a few minutes to “hook up” before lunch we have a much calmer time eating our lunch! (Victoria, November 2016)

“The fitter you are the better you will learn” John Ratey MD

Best selling author, John J. Ratey, MD, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized expert in Neuropsychiatry. Dr Ratey speaks about the benefit of exercise on learning in this 10 minute Youtube clip -he states exercise he says , optimises you ability to learn, regulate your emotions and improve your motivation. Click here to watch this Ted Talk Run, Jump, Learn! How exercise can transform your classroom

2 SUCCESSFUL WORKSHOPS IN NELSON IN APRIL

We had a wonderful 2 days in Nelson this school holidays with 2 groups. On the 14th April a keen group of teachers from around the district attended an Introduction to Brain Gym. On the 15th April we had an equally enthusiastic group of teacher aids, teachers and adult carers keen to know how to use Brain Gym with people with special needs.

Thank you to all who attended. I hope you are all using what you learnt this week.

Can Standardised Testing be harmful?

In this short video, linguist Noam Chomsky expresses his concerns about standardised testing and identifies key concerns about the artificial ranking of children and teachers in the classroom. The danger he says is that teachers are less creative and a child’s natural abilities are often not developed because it doesn’t fit the test. Classic teaching to the test.