Mindfulness for Preschool and Kindergarten: The OpenMind Program to Boost Social Emotional Learning and Classroom Engagement

(Paperback)

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A powerful SEL mindfulness program to help kids self-regulate, foster social and academic engagement, and bring peace back into the classroom.

As a teacher, you know that preschool and kindergarten are difficult periods of transition in kids' lives. This is true now more than ever, as young children in our world face increasing life challenges--including adverse childhood experiences, trauma, social disconnection, systematic discrimination, and a global pandemic. Students are struggling to balance their emotions and adapt to a classroom environment, the tools outlined in this mindfulness guide can help.

Mindfulness for Preschool and Kindergarten offers an effective, adaptable, multisensory, and skills-based social emotional learning (SEL) program to help preschool and kindergarten-aged children learn to self-regulate, ensuring a peaceful and prosocial learning environment in the classroom. The hands-on OpenMind program in this book will help kids cope with stress and trauma, process and understand difficult emotions, and interact positively with others. Kids will also learn how to bounce back from challenges, build resilience, and experience greater social and academic engagement.

The OpenMind program's five foundations go well beyond sequenced lesson plans and strategies to help promote a positive classroom experience. These include:

• Wellness and mindfulness training for teachers
• Practices to help kids build self-regulation, executive function, and engagement
• Planned practices and lessons in response to arising individual and learning environment needs that are anchored to social and academic content
• Scaffolding and modification of practices and lessons to promote learning and active mindful engagement
• A process for transforming challenging behaviors into opportunities for learning, growth, autonomy, and agency

You are on the frontlines of helping kids face some of life's most difficult challenges, and ensuring that they feel valued, protected, and supported. The weight of this responsibility can create stress and feelings of overwhelm for you. Let this guide support both you and your young students in cultivating a loving, safe, and rewarding classroom environment--together.

Reviews

"Mindfulness for Preschool and Kindergarten is a timely, accessible, practical, and research-grounded resource for educators looking for comprehensive and effective guidance on supporting young children to develop key social and emotional skills of self-regulation, connection, and prosociality. Research consistently shows that fostering such skills from an early age improves children's lifelong prospects. The program presented in this book increases the likelihood of such long-term benefits by embedding age-appropriate practices into daily lives, expanding on the foundation of mindfulness through loving-kindness and gratitude practices, and a balanced approach to working with difficult emotions. The wide range of meaningfully combined practices in this book has the potential to encourage children in developing essential life skills and self-understanding from an early age."
--Dusana Dorjee, PhD, associate professor of psychology in education at the University of York--Dusana Dorjee, PhD
"An authentic and nuanced approach to mindfulness for young children, Jackman offers an in-depth, comprehensive program to improve children's ability to engage and learn in the classroom. Different from other SEL programs, OMPK integrates creative, developmentally appropriate, and meaningful activities throughout the day, contextualized so that they 'make sense' to kids. Providing an abundant array of different activities for different situations and learners, Jackman makes implementing OMPK an easy lift for teachers. A truly terrific gift for our youngest learners and their teachers!"
--Karen Bluth, PhD, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; author of The Self-Compassion Workbook for Teens and The Self-Compassionate Teen; and coauthor of Mindfulness and Self-Compassion for Teen ADHD--Karen Bluth, PhD
"If you're an educator who wants to help your preschool students learn to cope more effectively with challenging emotions and be more focused in the classroom, this book will support you every step of the way. It provides a highly detailed and comprehensive guide to implementing the OpenMind Program, an empirically supported method to raise the social-emotional intelligence of young children."
--Kristin Neff, PhD, associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin--Kristin Neff, PhD
"In these challenging times, Mindfulness for Preschool and Kindergarten provides a timely and unique program supporting mindful engagement of all learners essential for both teachers and young children. Grounded in theory and research, this book is a comprehensive and self-contained guide for the effective mindfulness training of teachers and children containing a detailed outline of practices and classroom activities. Teachers will find this evidence-based book remarkably practical for developing children's mindfulness, self-regulation, executive function, and learning engagement."
--Oleg N. Medvedev, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and coauthor of Mindfulness-Based Intervention Research and Handbook of Assessment in Mindfulness Research--Oleg N. Medvedev
"This book is a precious resource for early childhood educators who wish to teach students fundamental skills of attentional focus, self-regulation, and mindful awareness that underlie and support learning, social relationships, and well-being. The book offers innovative and evidence-based practices for cultivating virtuous habits of attention and awareness in young children, as well as excellent recommendations for how educators can create a compassionate classroom environment in which children more readily learn such skills. I highly recommend it."
--Robert W. Roeser, PhD, Bennett Pierce Professor of Caring and Compassion at Pennsylvania State University--Robert W. Roeser, PhD
"This practical, detailed, and inspirational guide is a must-read for teachers bringing mindfulness into the preschool and kindergarten classroom. Multiple examples are provided throughout of how to address specific challenging behaviors in the classroom with the most appropriate mindfulness-based, age-appropriate exercise. The OpenMind Program holds a compassionate container for both the teacher and the child, and will be of great benefit to classrooms and their broader communities."
--Andrea Grabovac, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and codirector of the North American chapter of the Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Institute--Andrea Grabovac, MD
"Those of us educated in eons past were taught a lot about chemistry and history, but nothing at all about the nature of our minds. Yet it is the human mind that's responsible for both compassion but also great cruelty. Today however we are at the crest of an increasingly powerful wave to help children understand their minds and how to live to be helpful not harmful to themselves and others. Monica Jackman's OpenMind Preschool and Kindergarten (OMPK) Program is a wonderful contribution to this effort. She indicates many ways in which we can help children understand themselves that could be integrated into the school program and be a source for regular practice and guidance. Her program makes a significant contribution to one of the greatest challenges of humanity: the moral and compassionate education of young minds."
--Paul Gilbert, author of Compassionate Mind and Living like Crazy; professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby; visiting professor at the University of Queensland, Australia; and president of the Compassionate Mind Foundation (www.compassionatemind.co.uk)--Paul Gilbert
"Using a developmentally appropriate and student-centered approach, this book offers practices for very young children that build their social-emotional learning (SEL) skills using mindfulness as the backdrop. There is also a meaty chapter detailing mindfulness practices for educators, recognizing that teaching these skills involves embodiment of a mindful way of being. This is a must-read for anyone working with young children!"
--Deborah Schussler, EdD, professor of education at Pennsylvania State University, and faculty affiliate of Prevention Research Center and Rock Ethics Institute--Deborah Schussler, EdD

Author Bio

Monica Moore Jackman, OTD, MHS, OTR/L, is an occupational therapist, and owner of Little Lotus Therapy. She has a doctorate in occupational therapy from Chatham University, and undergraduate and master of health sciences degrees from the University of Florida. Monica has authored book chapters and research papers on mindful engagement, the mindful engagement support model, and mindfulness interventions, and has developed and implemented mindfulness-based training programs for adults, caregivers, preschoolers, and school-aged children. As an occupational therapist, she is dedicated to making mindfulness-based interventions inclusive and accessible to all learners, and supporting people to experience meaning, connection, and engagement in life. She has presented nationally and internationally on mindfulness-based programs and interventions. She has practiced for over twenty years in a variety of clinical settings, and served as an expert consultant to the Department of Justice for cases under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. Finally, she is a mother of four who uses these practices with her own family.

Foreword writer Nirbhay N. Singh, PhD, BCBA-D, is clinical professor of psychiatry and health behavior at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, a certified behavior analyst, and developer of the Mindfulness-Based Positive Behavior Support (MBPBS) and Soles of the Feet programs. His research focuses on assistive technology, health and wellness interventions, and mindfulness-based programs across the life span that reduce suffering and enhance quality of life. He is editor in chief of Mindfulness and Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders.