Connected Kids

In this sequel to her best-selling book 'Calm Kids', author Lorraine Murray introduces a range of mindful, heart-felt activities to that will help children to teens learn to relax, de-stress and feel centered. You will discover how to develop bespoke tools that support children with special needs and those on the autistic spectrum. In this book you will: - learn how meditation can support brain development, emotional intelligence and improved learning - develop a bespoke meditation 'toolkit' to help children and teens to reduce anxiety and stress - learn how to use meditation to 'problem solve' and overcome challenges - read about worldwide research that supports the use of meditation for health and well-being - become empowered with mindful activities that help children to shine This book is ideal for educators, parents and professionals, especially those with/working with children with additional support needs. Lorraine E. Murray is the Managing Director of Connected Kids - a worldwide programme that teaches adults how to teach kids meditation. She has been researching and teaching this since 2003 and is the author of 'Calm Kids - Help Children Relax With Mindful Activities'.

At school, we believe education should touch the whole child. This includes the physical, emotional, spiritual, social and cognitive aspects of the child's life. We teach children quietness as a skill to reflect and recharge their inner lives. Lorraine Murray helped us on this journey.' -- Sheila Laing, Head Teacher. Stress and behavioural disorders are common in children, who are increasingly bombarded by marketing campaigns, faced with school and peer pressure, and able to sense the stress of adults around them. Mindfulness and meditation can help children recognise and cope with these pressures, releasing bad feelings gently and giving them simple tools to deal with tension and stress throughout their lives. In this practical and inspiring book, Lorraine Murray shows parents, teachers and youth workers how to lead fun and peaceful meditation sessions with children. Lorraine explains a variety of different approaches, from meditations around daily activities for busy families, to ideas for group 'quietness' sessions in schools. She provides fun, tactile rhymes for toddlers to help them calm down before bedtime, and suggests ways to help teenagers reduce anxiety. She goes on to explain how these methods can help children with ADHD and those on the autistic spectrum, giving a range of case studies. This book is suitable for complete beginners, or those with some experience of relaxation and meditation techniques. It offers all the advice needed to lead sessions with children, whilst encouraging the reader to adapt and develop their own ways of helping children to feel calmer, happier and more peaceful.

A magical meditation on the powerful idea that we are connected to everything and everyone. Playful illustrations and funny, rhyming text show readers all of the many ways we are linked to every big, small, hairy, slimy, snuggly, scaly, floppy, flappy, bristly, buzzy, beautiful creature on Earth. “One of Bala Kids’s inaugural releases, this waggish picture book takes its title to heart, emphasizing readers’ connection to an eclectic roundup of people, objects, and phenomena.“—Publishers Weekly “Jason Gruhl invokes Dr. Seuss with some light rhyming and brings up everything that entrances children—tarantulas, slime, comets, you name it. Ignasi Font’s visually complex and incredibly funny illustrations (a blobfish that looks like Squidward?) will keep kids observing even on the hundredth read. The book is destined to become a dharma classic.“—Tricycle Everything is connected. And since you are part of everything, you are connected to everything: to pharaohs, Ben Franklin, T. Rex, ancient Greece, to love and to poverty, hunger and peace!

As seen in Time, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and on CBS This Morning, BBC, PBS, CNN, and NPR, iGen is crucial reading to understand how the children, teens, and young adults born in the mid-1990s and later are vastly different from their Millennial predecessors, and from any other generation. With generational divides wider than ever, parents, educators, and employers have an urgent need to understand today’s rising generation of teens and young adults. Born in the mid-1990s up to the mid-2000s, iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person—perhaps contributing to their unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But technology is not the only thing that makes iGen distinct from every generation before them; they are also different in how they spend their time, how they behave, and in their attitudes toward religion, sexuality, and politics. They socialize in completely new ways, reject once sacred social taboos, and want different things from their lives and careers. More than previous generations, they are obsessed with safety, focused on tolerance, and have no patience for inequality. With the first members of iGen just graduating from college, we all need to understand them: friends and family need to look out for them; businesses must figure out how to recruit them and sell to them; colleges and universities must know how to educate and guide them. And members of iGen also need to understand themselves as they communicate with their elders and explain their views to their older peers. Because where iGen goes, so goes our nation—and the world.

During a child's development, educators become a crucial connection point, with the potential to make a huge impact on a student's well-being. But are the educators okay? Carrington believes that most great educators want to make a difference. It's time we did a better job of looking after educators first!

How kids play in virtual worlds, how it matters for their offline lives, and what this means for designing educational opportunities.