Gratitude season is upon us, with Thanksgiving happening here in the US, and the rest of the holiday season to follow. While not everyone celebrates, or celebrates the same way, it can be a wonderful time to pause and practice gratitude – something that we can all benefit from and connect with, no matter what we celebrate, where we live, or what our traditions are.
Gratitude is a mindfulness practice and a big part of positive psychology, which looks at strengths and shifts your brain to notice the things that are good, positive, and working well. Your brain, and mine, is trained to naturally look at what is not working or going well, to help protect you from threats and stress. It can create a cycle where the more you see, the more you are looking for, and turn these into the pathways that you are using consistently. Gratitude helps you tune into the opposite. When you do this, it helps to create new pathways in your brain that see the parts that often go unnoticed – the things that are positive, bring joy to your world, and are going well for you. It helps you to pull away from the stress and not get stuck in it, so you can feel more at ease, more at peace, and for your brain to work more optimally.
And it can do the same for your students, specifically with the parts of the brain that help with learning, cognition, executive functioning, and language – all things that we work on in speech therapy and in school.
Gratitude doesn’t have to be anything super complicated – it can be as simple as thinking of 3 things that are positive in your day, or maybe writing down three things that went well for you. These small practices can build up and create big shifts in your outlook and mindset.
With students, this can be a fun way to engage with them, help them to put this into practice, and create or share some wonderful practices that will help them their entire life.
Here are Gratitude Activities for Speech Therapy or your Classroom:
Gratitude Books: Books are always a great option, because they promote and help support so many things, in speech therapy and beyond. You can use them for articulation, literacy, vocabulary building (expressive language skills), inference and wh?’s (receptive language skills), fluency, and more. Gratitude books are extra fun because they can help share gratitude practices, give unique topics to talk about, and lead into another activity, like a craft, gratitude list, or mediation.One of my favorite books is “Zen Pig”, which share s the journey of a pig who seems effortlessly happy to others, but really has the practice of gratitude to help him out.
Gratitude Crafts: I am not crafty, but I do love a good gratitude craft. The focus on these is usually to make a list of things you are grateful for, but make it more fun than just a “list” for the students. Turn it into a Thankful Turkey or a Positivity PIg (perhaps after reading Zen Pig), or a gratitude rainbow. You can take the things you are grateful for and attach them somehow. For a gratitude/thankful turkey, you can put together the body of it (great for following directions and sequencing) and then place the feathers. For each feather, you can write down one thing you are grateful or thankful for. You can then use these to target the students goals, either language or articulation. And If they celebrate Thanksgiving, you have a fantastic decoration to send home – which parents will appreciate 🙂
Gratitude Meditations: You could even use a gratitude meditation to start/end your session, to help bring in more mindfulness, and help promote that less stressed state, which enhances learning and the brain’s functioning. Maybe focus on different parts of the body ( i am grateful for my strong arms that carry my books, etc), or focus on things they are grateful for (they can silently name them in their head).
Gratitude Games: You could also get creative in a non-crafty way and use gratitude for a game, targeting your goals. Maybe use it to create a word list and then do your drills from there. Or create a list of things you are grateful for and play pictionary/charades, drawing or acting each one out, then practicing your specific skill. You could even create a word search or worksheet activity of some kind, if you need a little more downtime with it.
No matter what, at the end, be sure to pause and talk about gratitude, bring it back to a place to notice and breathe and reflect.
How do you incorporate gratitude into your speech room or classroom? Share below!
Want more resources to help you bring mindfulness and gratitude to your speech room or classroom? Enter your email below for instant access to my resource list, full of my favorite tools, tips, and places to find all things mindfulness. You’ll find anything from books to use in speech therapy, to yoga dice, to fidgets and more.
With Love, Light, and Gratitude,
Jessi
