Have you booked your Summer Course yet? Registration for our Summer Course 2024 is now open. This highly engaging course will enable schools to meet the requirement to initiate a wellbeing promotion review and development cycle. In addition it will offer a range of holistic well-being activities across a range of subjects in the primary curriculum for the mutual wellbeing of teachers and children.
All participants last year said that the course was professionally enabling and relevant to the work of their schools. Several noted that they also experienced personal growth through their participation in the course. Click here or on the image to find out more.
One participant wrote ‘Thank you so much – it was such an enjoyable week. I loved every bit of it and am much happier and less stressed than I was last week!‘ Another wrote ‘I found the active and ‘doing’ aspects of the course amazing. They were engaging, doable, and relevant.’
Another participant noted ‘I am just so grateful to have shared such a positive week with such open and kind facilitators and fellow participants.’
Over the coming weeks, please remind the children in your class to continue to meditate over the Summer. It might be a good idea to encourage them to meditate at home at least once a week as part of their ‘homework’ – reminding them that meditation helps them to grow in love.
Many teachers continue to meditate with the children in their classroom without ever learning to meditate themselves. Do you practice meditation in your own life? You might like to avail of free lessons online, starting just before school resumes next September. WCCM is offering a series of six online introductory sessions beginning on Monday, 26 August and the next four Mondays in September, concluding on Wednesday, 02 October 2024. Click here for further details or to register.
Please remind the children every now and then that saying their prayer word ‘Maranatha’ from the beginning to the end of meditation helps us to take our attention off our selves and give our attention to God’s presence in our hearts.
The Land of Beginning Again by Louisa Fletcher
I wish that there were some wonderful place
In the Land of Beginning Again.
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
and never put on again.
Reflection: This first verse of a poem by Louisa Fletcher makes a lovely verse for children to learn and recite. It also serves to remind children every time they sit down to meditate is a new beginning. When I spoke with the children about meditation, they told me that meditation helps them ‘to let go of all the drama’ in their lives. Meditation gives us an opportunity where where all our mistakes and all our heartaches and all of our poor selfish grief, can be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door and never put on again. And it creates a chance every day to simply be with Jesus, not speaking a word, but reciting our mantra silently in our minds, allowing ourselves to be filled with His love. We hope we will then show love to others as we work and play every day.
Each of the images here leads to a resource that can be used in practicing meditation as a whole-school practice. To access the Grow in Love resources, you will need to have your own or your school’s log in details.
The ‘Grow in Love’ website has a great range of resources that I am advised are underused by teachers -what resources have you found there that are helpful when you meditate with the children in your classroom. There are short videos on Noel Keating’s YouTube page, ‘Meditation for Wellbeing‘ designed for teaching children about the basics of how and why we meditate.
And the CD, Meditation for Children, is available freely on YouTube Music and Spotify.
Meditation for Parents and Grandparents
Many children meditate at home and many have introduced their families to meditation. Have you encouraged the children in your classroom to do just that?
Some schools like to set up a meditation group for parents, inviting parents or grandparents to call in to the school as they drop their children off and to meditate together on the same days that the children meditate in their classrooms. This kind of practice reinforces the fruits of the practice for the children. If you would like help in getting such a group started in your school contact Noel at mnkeating@gmail.com
