In today’s modern times with modern technology and material assets available at every step, increasing numbers of children are restless, tense, irritable, loud, and too often exposed to stress in early childhood. They lack inner peace, quiet and relaxation. We buy loud and bright toys for infants that over-stimulate their senses and disturb their inner-calmness. Soon after that, we engage them in various afternoon activities that may cause tiredness and stress. The aim of my thesis was to determine how certain relaxation methods can lead to increased calmness and reduced tension in pre-school children.
The theoretical part describes the impact of relaxation on the psychological and physical well being of children and adults. I also underlined the importance of silence and the correct breathing technique. Breathing is very important as it allows us to live, whereas full and effective breathing is directly related to our relaxation. I presented several relaxation techniques and described the calming methods I used with children in detail.
The empirical part discusses the calming activities I used with 4–5 years-old children in kindergarten. The calming project in kindergarten was divided into four parts: visualisation, Tibetan exercises for children, yoga and massage. We repeated each technique five times. The main purpose of the project is to explore the children's responses to calming activities, determine whether the gender of children has an impact on the participation in calming activities, establish whether regular calming activities improve relationships between children and to determine one relaxation technique that has the most calming effect on children.
I found that regular calming activities have a positive impact on children and on the atmosphere in the group. I detected positive experiences through the children’s response. They became more calm and relaxed, were easily motivated for the activities that were carried out in groups and consequently, they were concentrated for a longer period of time. In addition, children were fighting less frequently and their play-time was calmer and quieter. However, the boys were responding more to the Tibetan exercises than the girls and the girls were responding more to yoga and massage.
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