Emotional dysregulation is typical in today’s fast-paced, digitally connected world, where children are exposed to a barrage of stimuli from a young age. This manifests as difficulty in maintaining focus, managing emotions, behavior and relationships, thus, there is an immense need for developing social-emotional skills in a way suitable and efficient for children as early as possible.
Social-emotional education encompasses regular mindfulness practice, yoga, positive discipline, role-playing games, music and art therapy - all is integrated into the daily curriculum of Contextual Education. We holistically teach even the youngest children, twice a week children have breathing practices and yoga, using age-appropriate language, visual aids (e.g. unique deep breathing cards that have been presented at international conferences, right now we are developing cards with yoga poses), gamification (e.g. pretending to be a bear calming down before hibernation), guided activities (reflection of books, music, art therapies). Children also learn to recognize and articulate their feelings during the role-playing games. Next year this will be supplemented with sand-, biblio-, block-, nature-therapies.
Also we employ positive discipline throughout the day, teachers act as role-models. Parents are also regularly educated through webinars and various meetings.
We were the first in Lithuania to pilot a social-emotional curriculum in 3 of our preschools to select the most effective techniques and methods. Following teacher training and impact assessment, we launched the program full scale in all 10 of our preschools across the country, reaching more than 700 children. Beyond this, each year we organize conferences on social-emotional innovations, where 4700 educators have participated already. We also train other institutions and individuals (60 in 2 years), provide them with online webinars and implementation materials such as mindfulness cards for children. Finally, we actively share the practice beyond Lithuania – we conduct consultations and lectures to empower colleagues from Japan, Norway, India, Poland, US, India, etc.
Contact us! We will provide you with the science-based training course on social-emotional education: positive discipline, mindfulness, yoga for children, etc. We will train your staff, provide you with tested practices and tools (e.g. meditation and yoga cards, stories, games). Finally, come and see the program in practice at our preschools or we can visit you and help you learn by doing.
