Self-regulation refers to several complicated processes that allow children to appropriately respond to their environment. In many ways, human self-regulation is like a thermostat. A thermostat senses and measures temperature, and compares its reading to a pre-set threshold. When the reading passes the threshold, the thermostat turns either a heating or cooling system on or off. Similarly, children must learn to evaluate what they see, hear, touch, taste, and smell and compare it to what they already know. Remember, every child is unique and so is their thermostat! Just a few activities that you could use in your service to support children in developing this difficult skill.
Refocusing Activities
Clapping Exercise
Refocus with a series of claps with a certain pattern. The routine will capture student's attention and create a shared focus. This exercise can be enhanced with stomps, hand movements focused on fine motor skill development, or increasingly complex rules, depending on the student's interests and age.
Conducting an Orchestra
This activity requires the use of musical instruments. The teacher will have a long stick or ruler that and will act like an orchestra leader, conducting when they will play their instruments. The teacher will wave the conductors wand quickly or slowly and have students play according to her movements. Then, the teacher will have students override their automatic response by indicating that students should play slowly when she waves the conductors wand quickly, and vice versa.
Drum Beats
For this activity, the students will use drum cues from the teacher to do certain body movements. For example, "When the drums plays, clap or stomp" "When the drum plays slowly, walk around the room slowly" "When the drum plays quickly, walk around quickly". The teacher will then invert the response instructing "When the drum plays quickly, walk around slowly" When the drum plays slowly, walk around quickly.
Elephant Stampede
The class will get to stamp their feet and make lots of noise in this one, but it is all regulated by the teacher. The teacher puts a hand to her ear and says "What's that I hear?" The class responds by saying "Elephant Stampede!" The teacher then says where are the elephants? I can barely hear them!" The class responds with "Far away!" and begins quietly stamping their feet on the floor to mimic the sound of elephants in the distance. The teacher repeats his lines, adjusting for how close the elephants are, until the herd arrives in the classroom. Now the students can make elephant trumpets and stamp their feet as hard as they can until the teacher begins to quiet them down by saying "Oh good, they're going away!" The children respond by stamping their feet more softly, and continue to respond to the teacher until the elephant herd has left the building.
Relaxation Activities
Sinking Activity
Tell students to lie on their backs on the floor, their arms by their sides and legs uncrossed and eyes closed. Tell them (in a soft gentle voice) to imagine that their bodies are very heavy and sinking to the floor. Start to mention different body parts: toes, ankles, wrists, necks, eyelids. Then tell them to imagine that they are laying on a warm beach on a sunny day and that they can hear waves, seagulls, then once they have calmed down they may only sit up and open their eyes. This will help students calm their emotional and refocus.
Count to Ten
The teacher stands at the front of the class and raises both hands above her head, spread open and facing the class. The students raise their hands over their heads, fingers spread, and facing the teacher. The teacher begins counting slowly from one to ten, and at ten lowers her hands to her sides. The class follows until everyone is back in the position they started in.
Drawing
Drawing a picture helps to relax children. Try giving your students a prompt! For example, "draw how you feel right now." This helps children to recognize their emotions whether good or bad and process them in a healthy manner. Part of self regulation is learning to deal with your emotions in the appropriate manners and this activity sets up a calming environment for kids to learn to do this. Aside from processing emotions, drawing helps children and adults process any circumstance and is very calming to the mind!
Emotional Regulation
Breathing Square
Have students decorate a square piece of paper that they then glue to a lollipop stick. Explain that this square is to be used when the student feels overwhelmed or frustrated. The square will be divided up into 4 sections representing 4 different steps they are to follow.
1st step: Breathe in while counting to 4
2nd step: Hold breath for four seconds
3rd step: Breathe out for four seconds
4th step: repeat three times
Push hands together and count to ten
Draw around fingers and hand with other hand in air/ on table
Calm down area
