This week in mind-up we have been talking about "Mindful listening". 

We decided that is was important as it will help us in school to focus, it can help us to solve friendship problems, to concentrate in class and can help us to be a more caring person. 

We talked about the importance of the RAS (reticular activating system) the part of your brain that helps to sieve out the noises that you don't need and focus on the things you do. We discussed how we can train our RAS so we can be really good at focusing and concentrating, by joining in our brain breaking for instance and listening really carefully to the chime. This trains our RAS to focus on just one thing and block out other noises. 

We talked about people how people use mindful listening in their jobs e.g. Usain Bolt - blocks out the noise of the crowd to listen for the starting whistle. Ed Sheeran - listens very closely to all of the sounds he is making while he is mixing them on stage to make sure they sound good, blocking out other noises around him. Doctors - Use  use mindful listening when talking to patients and other doctors to get all the information they need to be able to treat the patient. If they were not focused/listening they may miss important information. 

The children had a go at a mindful listening exercise. We listened carefully to three different pieces of music:

• Can't stop the feeling - by Justin Timberlake
• Hey Jude - By the Beatles

• Vivaldi - Winter, The Four Seasons

The children then answered the questions:how did it make them feel? What instruments could they hear?  What did it make them think of? 

Learning line

We have been learning about the learning line. This shows the children that learning is not an easy process, and it can be difficult to learn something new, but not giving up and persevering pays off! During this lesson we talked about what they could do to help if they saw their friend struggling. The children came up with words of encouragement e.g. you can do it! don't give up! 

Whether it be learning to throw and catch, ride a bike or read a book. Don't give up, even if you drop the ball a few times, that's OK - just keep practicing. You will get there! 

Brushing your teeth

 This week we have been looking at good tips for brushing our teeth. We started off by looking at the reasons why we brush our teeth. We talked about keeping them clean so they do not become sore. Then we looked at possible ways to do this. We watched a video to help us understand how to do this (below). The children then shared some top tips for keeping teeth clean on a giant tooth. Then we made a class mouth of teeth in the classroom!