The day was named “Mindful Movements” and the teachers planned a variety of mindful activities for Friday’s language lessons. Students enjoyed dances, exercise classes, yoga, meditation, and mindful craft activities all in our second languages.
In Year 5 German teacher Frau Romana Stjepanovic and her students engaged in physical exercises conducted by an Austrian primary school teacher. The students exercised their bodies and minds by following the instructions in German.
Year 1 Chinese students enjoyed dancing to the Little Apple Dance with their teacher Linda Gu. This fast paced, complex dance is not for the faint hearted, the students tested their coordination and their listening skills. Ms Gu also challenged her Year 2 class with a video clip of Chinese Gong Fu.
Children’s yoga is a great activity for language lessons because it combines physical activity with storytelling. Madame Freixas led her Year 5 French class through a yoga sequence. The students also had some time to reflect on their thoughts by completing a “worry jar” worksheet.
Maestra Rotellini’s Year 6 Beginners Italian class participated in a few mindful movement activities, exploring their feelings to build their emotional awareness, guided breathing exercises and they also tried to master a few yoga poses ‘la mezzaluna: la farfalla, la roccia e l’albero.”
Kindergarten and Year 1 Italian classes first got their hearts racing with some fast dance tunes and then stretched their bodies with Italian yoga.
“It was great to see that the children were already familiar with the poses,” noted Maestra Annamaria.
Just Dance videos are popular amongst the students so Year 5 Italian enthusiastically followed two Just Dance Italian songs. One was a remix of a traditional Italian song Tu Vuoi Fa’ l’Americano and the other was a modern summer hit Da Zero a Cento. After all this excitement the students and maestra relaxed into an Italian meditation session.
Ava Roberts in Year 6 Italian was so inspired by her studies of Ancient Rome that she spent many mindful moments to create a beautiful mosaic. Her artwork “La Lupa” is from the legend of “Remo e Romolo.” Maestra Genua-Petrovic said her artwork showed great dedication to her Italian studies and careful craftsmanship.