Conflict Resolution and Communication Skills
In today’s world, it is important for children to learn non-violent ways of settling disputes. Students are taught negotiation techniques, ways to avoid confrontations with a bully and how to handle problems with friends or within diverse groups. Participants learn how to keep journals as a means of analyzing and managing the patterns of their conflicts more effectively.
Relationships
Respect, trust and commitment are key ingredients in maintaining successful relationships. Students discuss the meaning and effects of interpersonal behavior and communication. They also learn to recognize power dynamics. The emphasis of this course is on how to build, maintain and improve relationships, as well as developing the confidence necessary to create healthy connections with others.
Kids who Care – Volunteering
Why should we volunteer? Where can we volunteer? In this course, students will grow as they learn to reach out to others through service work at home and through community projects. They acquire understanding of the feelings and experience of those less fortunate, and learn how their own efforts lay the groundwork for a better community and world. Students find that by bettering the lives of others, they have in fact bettered their own. We also provide contacts for groups and associations needing children willing to offer their time as volunteers.
Meditation and Yoga: Improved Life Balance
In this experiential yoga and meditation class, we discuss holism, balance and the benefits of body-mind practices. Each session affords ample opportunity to try these techniques and to discuss feelings. This class improves student ability to connect to our centers through concentration and focus.
Wellness
Wellness promotes overall well-being on physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. We explore nutrition and exercise (physical wellness), healthy relationships (emotional wellness), intellectual development and the value of self-discipline and hard work (mental wellness), and feeling connected to those around us as well as to a greater whole (spiritual wellness).
Building Self-Esteem
The way we feel about ourselves has a huge effect on the way we treat others and the choices we make. The goals of this course are to become aware of how confidence affects one’s life, to understand the relationship between self-esteem and decision-making and to recognize how our behaviours and relationships either enhance or undermine our confidence. Through fun projects and group activities, students emerge with a brighter perspective and a new sense of self.
Friendship Basics
As students move through adolescence, friendship dynamics become more complex, and more central to their lives. Friendship Basics explores such matters as: the characteristics of good friendship; the differences between “true” friends and “false” friends; how to prevent conflicts; how to handle change and ways to cultivate new friendships. Through role-playing and other activities, students learn key life lessons that will help them make and sustain solid relationships.
Mentoring Buddies: A Mentoring Program
In these troubling times, it is important for kids to have someone reliable and trustworthy to turn to. This program is a fun and nurturing way to provide students with role models and peers with whom they can talk. More than anything else, mentors become friends to students.
P’s and Q’s: Basic Etiquette
This etiquette class is tailored to the learning styles of the very young. Children are taught the basics of etiquette: What is it? Why is it important? Hands-on activities help students appreciate good manners and behavior. We use stories to show how etiquette can mean very different things around the world. Adopting the language of good manners will serve children throughout their lives.
Yoga Kids
A basic experiential yoga class, Yoga Kids gives children ample opportunity to try basic yoga practices and discuss how they feel afterwards. It’s is a great way for children to learn relaxation, concentration, and agility through activity.
Mindful Learning
Parents and teachers tell children to pay attention, but we never show them how. In this class we teach techniques that promote the ability to focus and concentrate. Students learn the importance of maintaining a peaceful state though breathing and guided imagery; this is a skill that serves children well as they progress through the pressures of school into adulthood and the workplace.
Empowerment Against Bullies
Many students are either victims of bullying or are bullies themselves. Activities such as role-playing, effective conflict-resolution, the proper use of text-messaging, emails and chats, skill-building games and group discussions provide participants with insight and guidance for positively dealing with bullies. Victims of bullying learn how to empower themselves. Through life lessons learned in this course, students gain fortitude and a positive self-image that will serve them in and out of school.
Public Speaking
Effective public speaking is crucial to nearly every academic and professional field. This course teaches students to walk and talk with assuredness and purpose,, overcome jitters, and deliver speeches with confidence and animation. They will learn how to capture interest and attention, sustain audience control and achieve effective participation when speaking to a group of any size! It’s the kind of course parents wish they had when young.
If you don’t see what you’re looking for, we would be happy to customize a class to suit your students’ interests and needs.
Contact us to bring our programs to your school
Please feel free to email us or call at (301) 229-8000 for further information. We look forward to hearing from you!