Make Peace Rocks

What You Need:

• Pebbles or rocks large enough to write on
• Permanent markers
• Chime or triangle
• Peace Rocks worksheet
• 4 pebbles for each child (you can collect the pebbles yourself or have the children collect them)
• Colored pencils
• Crayons

What You Do:

1. What does peace mean to you? Have students reflect on what peace means to them. Ask them when they are not peaceful and if they have any strategies to “keep the peace” and maintain a sense of peacefulness.
2. Tell them that today they will learn a strategy to help create peace inside themselves.
3. Have students think of images that help them feel peaceful, or a time when they have felt peaceful, and draw the image or experience.
4. Once students have thought deeply about when they’ve felt peaceful, have them pick up one of the rocks and breathe deeply as they connect with their peaceful image or moment. Tell them this will help infuse the rock with peace.
5. After the rock is "infused with peace,” have students decorate the rock with whatever design they feel conjures up a feeling of peace.
6. If time permits, have students choose other helpful words and create calm rocks, confidence rocks, or focus rocks.
7. Now whenever students feel stressed, upset, or overwhelmed, they can use their peace rocks and breathe deeply.

About the author: Meena Srinivasan, MA, National Board Certified Teacher, is a leader in the fields of Mindful Awareness Practices (MAP) and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). She is the author ofTeach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom(Parallax Press, 2014) andSEL Everyday: Integrating Social and Emotional Learning With Instruction in Secondary Classrooms(Norton, 2019).