Following the directions in the teachers’ manual of Dino trilogy read the story in a low voice, slow pace, choosing the paragraphs you want to emphasize between the intro and ending After this the children will be still and pliable for a couple of hours.
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I used to live in a place that was very cold in the winter time. By October all the plants and flowers had been bitten by jack frost and were ready to sleep for the winters.
When a plant goes to sleep its roots stay alive under the ground, but they just stop growing. The top of the plant, the green part
looks as if it has died.it might turn brown and just lay down on the dirt, or it might dry up and blow away in the wind.
When I look at plants in the winter,when the snow has come to the
places where they get snow, I think about how beautiful they were
in the summer time, and I begin to wonder what those things will be
like when they come alive in the spring.
I sometimes used to get very excited when the spring time was starting to come. The snow began to melt as the earth warmed with the rays of the sun.
The sky looks brighter and if it does rain,
there are rainbows in the sky.
Then the sun comes out and everything starts to
feel warm and comfortable.
The little plant roots are under the ground,
and as the ground begins to warm and soften
the roots start to grow and
a little stem starts to grow out of the roots and
break its way through the soft dirt,
then wnen it peeks
up through the dirt at the bright blue sky,
now and the warm yellow sunlight and begins to
feel the energy from the sun,
the plant starts to turn green and grow leaves.
And you know, now,
every year, the same flowers grow from the roots
If those roots had daises on them the summer before,
they will have daisies again when spring comes.
If the root grew tulips flowers last year
it will grow tulips again this year.
Even the color doesn't change from year to year.
Each spring the same things happen to the earth,
and the plants grow in the same way they did the spring before that
They don't have any choices and they don't
think about what they would like to be
or what color they would like their petals to be
They just grow according the plan
that is coded into their roots, and whatever they are they stay that.
But the flowers are beautiful to look at,
and the smell of flowers,
the pleasant aroma, is a nice thing to have.
Have you ever touched a flower petal?
It feels so soft and smooth that
your fingers might just want to keep on touching it
>or want to touch the leaves or stems or just
sit gooiest in your lap while you just
look at the jigs and enjoy their beautiful colors and aroma.
In some stories jigs are little people as tiny as flowers.
Sometimes it might be fun to
imagine that you are as tiny as a flower
and live among the grass and flowers.
Maybe you can imagine being
shrunk down to the size of a grasshopper and
begin to look at the world in a completely new way.
Things might look very different to you as you
imagine you are among tall flowers
and huge leaves spread over you to make shade and shadows.
A drop of rain might seem as large as a watermelon
and a tiny ant might appear to be as large as a cow.
Some stories tell about flying
When the children in the stories
fly up above the houses and trees,
the world must look very different to them.
From high in a hot air balloon,
or on a kite, or just flying through the air,
the houses might look very tiny,
and people would look so small they would be just little dots.
Now, a friend of mine used to like to
imagine that he was in the stories and you can
do all the wonderful things
that the little people in stories could do.
Other times he imagined that he was a giant,
he said you could feel heavy,
and you could hear the sound of them stomping down a street
as he picked up cars and houses and put them back down.
Other times my friend says you could just lie in the grass on a warm soft blanket and close your eyes
and listen to the sounds around you.
You could try to know where the sounds and smells came from,
and what was making those things be there,
where you are lying so still and so quietly.
Sometimes I like to find a quiet spot and just listen.
You can do it too.
While you are Listening you might like to
imagine stories and think about the
things you have learned
and might learn from the things around you.
I like to reach out and feel the grass, or the blanket with my bare toes,
and fingers.
You can even rub your cheek against the velvety petals of a flower
or let a butterfly brush its wing softly against your cheek.
I think that the people who told the stories long ago that have
become very special stores must have liked to
sit very still and listen to the sounds of the world around them,
and feel the touches of things near you.
Your imaginations could begin to work
and you might have even started to
see pictures in your own minds
of the little people, or giants,
or flying children that they told you about.
I think children just like you must have s
at around these story tellers
and listened quietly just as you are listening,
and as you listen your minds could
make pictures,
or hear new sounds,
or just be very still and not think about anything.
It is sometimes good just to be who you are,
without doing anything,
or thinking anything.
Because you know that
you are valuable and precious
just because you are.
But the thing that is so different about you and me
and other people and other children,
different from the flowers that grow the same way every spring,
is that you and I and others like us can
think with our minds.
We can learn from things that happen to us
and make choices to do something over and over,
or to change our behaviors and our actions and do different things.
If we don't like how things turn out when we act one way,
we have minds to think with
and can make choices to change things.
And when we like how things turn out,
when we like the things that happen to us we try to do the thing again
that might have made that nice thing happen.
We watch for consequences of what we do,
that means we watch to see what will happen next,
and we learn from those consequences.
And as our learnings increase,
our choices increase and
we have more and more choices that we make all the time every day.
A flower cannot choose what color it will be or how long it will bloom,
but you can make choices that change what you do,
choices that change their behaviors.
No one is trapped in a place so small that he can't
make decisions about what he thinks.
Even if a person had to stay in a tiny cage where he was not able
to move or work or
couldn't choose anything
about what his body could do,
no one can make a trap so small that it can put your mind into prison.
No matter what is happening,
no matter what other people say or do to you,
you can decide for yourself what you want to think about.
You can think about rainbows and flowers,
and drops of water shining with sunlight on the leaves of a tree,
and smell the smell of springtime and freshness that comes after a shower of rain. No one can stop you from thinking about beautiful things.
Other children tell me that sometimes their minds are full of angry thoughts
and thoughts about hurting themselves or others,
and they tell me they don't like to think those things,
but they think they do not have a choice what they think about.
When I ask them to tell me their beautiful thoughts,
they tell me
they don't have any. So I tell them,
"you can make a list of beautiful thoughts.
You can fill your mind with beautiful thoughts,
thoughts about beautiful things you can see,
and sounds you can hear,
aromas and smells you can smell and taste and
wonderful things that you can feel on your skin,
with your fingers,
or feelings your whole body can feel like a warm shower
Sitting in a very safe body of water with
the temperature just the way you like it.
I tell these children who come to me,
“you can read these lists
of thoughts every day many times,
to begin to put beautiful thoughts into your mind.
Then when a thought comes that you don't want to be there,
you have these beautiful thoughts from songs or poetry or stories,
or just things that you have experienced and learned
with your own five senses.
You have all these beautiful thoughts ready and willing to
take the place of the angry thought,
the hurt thoughts or
what ever thought it is
you want to be rid of.
There are certain kinds of grasses that grow
on lawns in parks or yards that have stickers and thorns that get into your clothes and hurt when they scratch against your skin. There are other grasses that are soft and strong, and grow green all summer long.
If you plant a lot of the good grass seeds, pretty soon the bad grass will be crowded out. If you take a little shovel or some tool and
dig out the stickery grass by the roots,
the good grass can replace it even faster.
Your lawn will be soft and beautiful to walk on and lie on
when you want to dream or imagine things.
After we painted last time I took the cup of water
that you had washed your brushes in and set it in the sink.
I turned the water faucet on so it was dripping fast
and watched as the cup filled the ]rest of the way with water.
At first the dirty water in the cup colored all the new clean water
and it looked as if the painty water might color all of the new water
The drops of clean water came from the tap.
The cup filled and the mixture of dirty and clean water
began to over flow the sides,
and the water got lighter colored as
more of the mixture of water spilled out and down the drain.
Finally the water in the cup was as clean and clear as the water from the faucet. All the dirty murky water had spilled out and
gone down the drain to wherever water goes.
I like to imagine that my mind is like a cup of water.
Some of the thoughts that are in my mind are angry thoughts,
and some painful thoughts
I like to drip clean beautiful thoughts
into my mind to have them there when I want to
replace an angry or sad thought that hurts me.
If I read and learn from all the good places,
and choose to think about the beautiful things in the world,
and the kind things that people do and the
wonderful things I can learn and
wonder about and imagine,
then my mind will fill with clean healthy thoughts.
The ones I don't choose to keep
will be pushed out and go down the drain to
wherever unwanted thoughts might go.
They might try to come back.
The more often I push them out with good thoughts,
the weaker they will become and
like the painty water was diluted and
began to loose its color.
The bad thoughts will become so weak
they cannot make themselves be heard or felt over all the good thoughts.
So when I look at the flowers growing in the springtime,
I am glad that I can
make choices about what I am and
what I can think and do
I don't have to keep on being the same way I was last time,
or in another day or another year.
I can grow and change and
make choices about who I am
and how I want to think and act
I can even make choices about the way I want to feel.
(See K.C.)
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