 How can we use transition activities to help a child move from one space face activity to the next? That's what we're going to be exploring in today's podcast. Let's dive straight in. Okay, so in today's podcast, which I've already recorded once without pressing the record button, so let's hope the second time round is great. Well done, Pookie. We're going to be thinking about transition activities. So how we can use different little simple activities to help children get into the right mindset, mood, state of regulation to manage well the next task that they need to do. This isn't just for kids, actually. I use these types of activities all the time in my day-to-day life in order to manage things well, and I'll share a little bit about that too. And these are activities that can be used at home, at school, anywhere where we're supporting or working with children and young people. These are activities that can be used to calm if we need to bring things to a calmer state. So we're ready for learning, for example, or ready for bed at home. And they can also be used to activate and energize if we need to really raise the motivation, get some activation going, be really getting ready to move ourselves on from a quieter state into one that's going to involve a little bit more energy, movement, or noise, for example. So these can just help to ease that transition. These are particularly important things to think about for those children who might struggle more with moving from one activity to the next. And our neurodivergent children and adults are a group who find this particularly challenging, but you might have other children that you've got in mind as well here. It can just be hard moving from one type of activity, one type of place, one type of people, and into something different. So a classic example here would be from home to school, or school to home, or within school, from break times and lunch times, which can be big and loud and busy, and then into learning, or between different kinds of learning as well. If you've got a bunch of children who've just arrived to you from their maths class and you're their PE teacher, that's quite a different kind of activity and level of energy that we're looking for, and we might need some activities here to engage, to energize, to activate, and get kids ready to get moving. So you get the idea. Please remember though that these transitions from one thing to the next can be genuinely really challenging for some of our children and adults too, particularly if we have had an opportunity to really get into our flow in a particular activity, or we're particularly comfortable there and things feel good. Being then sort of runched away, dragged away to do the next thing can feel really challenging. And so we can also support with that by doing things like making sure that the child knows when this is likely to happen, that they have plenty of warning, that we do things in a routine way at similar ways and with similar warnings each time, just so it doesn't come as a sudden surprise. You can have the best transition activities in the world, but if the child receives that transition activity with no warning when they're right in the middle of doing something where they've really found their flow and they're really deeply invested in it, then that transition activity is potentially not going to be enough to ensure that the next activity is likely to be a success. So just be somewhat empathetic towards that, that this movement from one thing to the next can feel really hard. So we just need to think about how to ease that, not just through these activities, but through our warnings and the way that we organize our day as well. Okay, so the first kind of transition activity I'm going to suggest for you is music. I love music. I mention it often. Music can be a great way to flip mood. So mood, flip music, thinking about what kind of mood, what kind of feeling are we going from and moving to and how might we be able to use a particular piece of music or playlist in order to achieve that mood flip. So we might be using music that activates, that gets us up and dancing around and jumping around and gets the heart rate going if we're going from calm to very active, or we might use music to do quite the opposite to really calm things down and we might be using things like our classical music or our calming playlist that we've created. Now we can do this in the classroom by playing music to the whole class in order to calm things down after a break if we want to get ready for reading or maths, for example. We might do this in the car if we're commuting from home to school or school to home. Think about how you can use music to help achieve the mood that you're looking for. That might look different on the way to school than on the way from school. Think about how music can be powerful here. At times of calm, explore with the child or the children, what music feels good here and what effect it can have on them. And don't be afraid just to use the same pieces of music or playlist again and again and again because we can become kind of conditioned, have that Pavlovian response to particular pieces of music that when we start to hear them our body, our brain instantly starts to react by making the transition to that new mood, that new feeling that we are looking for. So it's okay practice really does make perfect here. So mood flip music is number one. Number two is to get calmly creative. So lots of these activities are about calming things down. I particularly think when I'm thinking about these activities about moving from a really, really busy unstructured lunchtime that might have felt quite stressful for some of our children, particularly our neurodivergent ones, to then trying to get to a place of calm readiness for learning. Equally, these calming activities can be very helpful when a child moves from a busy school day that might have been challenging for them. They might have managed it okay. Perhaps you've got a child who when they get home tends to be somewhat explosive. It might be that they've been holding it all in or masking or camouflaging all day. And some of these activities can really help them to calm and work through what might have happened that day so that we don't need that explosion, but we find other slightly more regulated ways to just work through what has happened during the day and to move on to the next thing. So calmly creative. This is about doing things like drawing or writing or making, doing in some way, getting it out of our head, whether that's kind of particular tangible things that have happened or just some thoughts or feelings or just generally the stuff going on in our head, finding some creative outlets for letting that out. That might look like journaling. That might look like writing a poem. That might look like painting. That might look like just coloring and picking the colors that are reflecting our mood right now. We don't have to tell a child to do that, by the way. We don't sit them down with a coloring sheet and say, now, color according to your mood. I mean, you could if you wanted to, but children will naturally gravitate towards the colors that they want to in that moment. It doesn't have to be an activity that we've really loaded with loads and loads of meaning. Just the activity itself can be really calming and quite creative in its own right. They might choose to make things like Play Doh can be helpful here. We might get creative through things like Play. Some children will find it really, really helpful to have access to toys that they're familiar with, particularly ones that they can kind of role play with after a busy day and when they want to work through what has happened. It doesn't mean that they need to talk to you and tell you about what's happened in their day, but just sometimes the opportunity to work this through with their dolls, with their Sylvania families, with their Legos, with whatever it is that they need and they connect with in order to do that. They might also do this in an online world, so perhaps they'll work through it in Minecraft or road blogs, but the opportunity to get creative, to work through it, to be calming things down by working through what's happened last so we can move on to what happens next can be helpful here. An additional step for calmly creative is number three, right and rip or create and destroy. Now this can help if we're moving from something that was not so good and we want to get ourselves ready for what comes next without being completely embroiled in the challenging stuff. So absolutely classic scenario here is if we've got some kids who've had some challenging stuff going on at break time or lunchtime, maybe there's some friendship issues that's been going on, maybe there has not been good sharing or something like this that has triggered some sort of response and it's being carried into the classroom or as a parent or carer, perhaps you've got a child where there's been things that have gone on during the school day and they want to be able to work through them. A particular teacher has said or done something that they're carrying home with them. A child said or did something or there was an interaction that they are carrying home and they're not feeling good about it at all. So what we can do here is we can write and rip or create and destroy. So this is where we create something that represents the feelings or the event that has happened. We write it down, we make it out of Play-Doh, we draw it, whatever and it doesn't have to be a good representation, it's just about asking what's in our head out, putting it out there in the world. I'm going to have to share it, this can be a private activity and then we can tear it up and make it go away or we can destroy it. We can in some way let go and this is a very, very helpful thing to do sometimes, just let it go. Just get it out there, let it go. Helping our children to learn the art of forgiving, letting go and moving on and allowing ourselves to have a fresh start right now can be really helpful. There are some situations where things need to be resolved and we might ask the child if there's something that you need to share with me or you want to talk about then we can do that and we might either take the thing they've created now and ask them to talk to us about it or we can put a pin in it for later and say this really matters but actually right now we've got to get to X-Place so let's get it out and that will help and we're going to talk about it at such and such a time so we're making an appointment with that worry and that can help. So some things do need some support and resolving but some things don't, some things are just things that can't be resolved, things that have been resolved already for other people but perhaps we're still carrying and we just need the chance to get it out and rip it up and tear it away and move on. It's important for us to help our children learn to recognise at what point it is appropriate to let go and move on and at what point it's important to revisit and consider and reflect and think about what next. This is an art rather than a science and I'm still working on it personally but it's certainly good conversations to be having with our children and what we don't want to be doing isn't to be in a situation where something that's happened many hours ago and for which there might not be any resolution is impacting on our ability to enjoy what comes next in our day so finding ways to let that go can be really powerful for our children and for us as well and we might do this alongside our children and let go of those things that are sitting with us too we all have those things. Number four on my list is a whole class stretch, wriggle or walk and again this is something you can do alongside your child or children if you are a parent or carer or in a bit of a different situation but a whole class stretch, wriggle or walk is the idea of kind of whole class regulation when we've got a lot of pent up energy and we're moving perhaps from big busy times and we're trying to get to that point of readiness for learning for calmer activities where we want that sense of quiet busyness in our classroom and that can be difficult when we're moving from the heightened state of playtime and break time or maybe PE or something that's been busy busy busy and busy busy busy to wanting something calmer so we might try and take all that energy and actually do something physically proactive with it so something really kind of sensory so a whole class stretch and this doesn't have to take up loads of space but we might get up and do a little bit of like yoga positions or something like that can work well but equally we could just be sat in our seats and we might just think about every part of our body and really stretch out those toes and give them a bit of a wriggle and then moving around our ankles and working up through the body like that and just tensing and relaxing each part of the body and moving it through again can really help here if we've got kind of pent up energy like tense and relax can really really help to just let that energy go so tense and relax can also help here a walk can also be super helpful very very regulating walking is amazing because it can be both calming and activating at the same time for the children who need it so if you're looking for something to do with your whole class and everyone's in a different state of regulation and we want to end up at the same point why not think about getting up and going for a walk just for a couple of minutes it can just be a walk around the classroom you might have set up different stations in the room and you're going to take the children around to show them what's going to happen in the next lesson or even better if you can get up get out get some fresh air have a couple of minutes of walking here and falling in step with each other noticing what's around us perhaps a bit of a mindful walk while we listen to the different sounds that we can hear for example before we return and we're at a more equivalent state to each other afterwards again walking brilliant if you've got an individual child as well you might think about that commute from home to school if you're doing pickup or drop-off we always found in our family when the children were still going to school that that walk to school was a really important moment and for me as a parent when my children were especially struggling at school and if i'd be asked to come and calm things down or bring them home i would never do so in the car if i could avoid it because actually the walk home would make a really big difference to my children's ability then to engage with the rest of the day so i would turn up to a child who was perhaps mute and entirely unable to manage in school anymore this wasn't working and i would appear generally with a lollipop an outstretched hand and the offer to walk home and then everything would be fine one little kind of side point to that for those of you in schools listening i am fairly convinced that there were times when my daughter's school thought that she was making it up because she couldn't speak and she would be in complete fight flight freeze type which all of them cycling through responses she might well have absconded by this point gone and hidden been tracked down might have got angry and then gone completely mute and the moment that i would walk through the door this would all completely go away when she knew she was going home i'd hand her a lollipop we find lollipops very regulating in our household i have a very big supply of chapa chups i use for myself too um and i'd hand her a lollipop take her hand and she would chat away to me explain what had happened and we'd walk home and everything would be fine and i honestly think that from some of the looks that i got sometimes people just thought she was faking it and she just wanted to go home she wasn't faking it at all it's just that we have a very positive relationship she knew she was safe and we knew what to do to calm things down quite quickly um so if you do see that kind of complete flip in a child like that um please don't assume they're faking it instead i would suggest that you speak with the adult who's able to co-regulate with the child in that way and speak with the child at times of calm and think what can we learn from you from this and what would we be able to do to maybe manage that ourselves in school that's what i would suggest in that situation okay so you've got your whole class kind of stretch wriggle walk of course those activities can all be done with individuals within a class um or uh with your individual child if your parent care as well um and you can also think to to do these not just at moments of transition but anytime we need to kind of transition mood so a child might do well for being given an errand to run we find this to be a magic panacea they're made up errand that needs to be taken urgently across the school can give a child the opportunity to feel a sense of purpose and belonging it can remove them from the situation they might be finding challenging right now and it gives them the opportunity to walk which is a really regulating activity number five of six today is getting ready rituals so having ritualistic ways of moving from one task to the next can really help a this can help those children who struggle a lot with transitions between activities and might find it hard to stop the thing that they're doing to understand it's time to stop this now and it's time to move on so we might have rituals around things like putting away getting ready for the next thing and or getting things out getting ready for the next activity um and so we can think about what this might look like how we can do this in a ritualistic way which doesn't mean it's got to be kind of really fancy and you're adding lots of different elements to it but rather simply that we just do it in the same way each time we might use the same words have a bit of a script going on here we might do things in the same order and people might have the same jobs the same roles we might give the same warnings that this is going to happen next these simple things are things that we will naturally sometimes fall into as we get a bit more of a rhythm but things like as we're preparing for the start of a new school year or if it's a new activity we haven't done before we might not have thought really carefully about what the rhythm of that might look like but thinking ahead about what might be our script for this kind of gear change here can really help us out and think not just about the gear change into the new activity but also out of the old activity too what are our warnings that there's five minutes to go three minutes to go one minute to go they might be as simple as that letting a child know there's five minutes to go three minutes to go one minute to go but it might be that there are other warnings that you're using here through the use of things like sounds or music through the use of putting up prompts or props on the screen for the next activity it will depend on you your situation what it is that you're getting ready for next but allowing children to ease into that transition and then to engage with and work with you on those rituals you can also use those rituals to make boring tasks feel a little bit more fun and a little bit more of a sense of team and cooperation for children as well when everyone is involved in working together in harmony on a task like clearing up or putting away or getting things out and getting things ready and we do that together it can feel really fantastic there's a lovely sense of belonging and cohesion that comes from that sort of teamwork and finally number six the trusty breathing and grounding exercises you probably guessed I was going to get them in here somewhere breathing exercises things that will help us to regulate our breathing grounding exercises things which help us to feel right here right now and take us away from all the other thoughts and feelings and busyness that might have been happening around us there are lots and lots of different ones out there on my youtube channel on other people's youtube channels pick your favorites and you can do these with an individual child you can encourage a child to do them on their own or you can do them as a whole group as a kind of big co-regulatory exercise and again where possible join in if you can you can lead on this you can role model it you as the calm supportive caring adult will help the children all to regulate through that co-regulation relationship really really effective and the more that you do it with them the more that they learn from you the more they'll be able to do this for themselves in time so you can pick whichever are your favorites here favorites for me include breathing in for the count of five and out for the count of seven or we might do our box breathing where we breathe in for four we hold it for four we breathe out for four and we hold it for four or our feather breathing where we imagine a feather on the palm of our hand and we breathe out with a huge great long outbreath trying to hold that imaginary feather floating in the air for as long as we can and then our grounding exercise things that make us feel here and right now and really connected that might include things like trust the old five or three two one where we work through our senses and we have a look around just for five things we can see four things we can hear three things we can touch and so on until we end up with one long out breath my ever present caveat for five four three two one it doesn't matter what order you do it in do it in whatever order works for you just work through the senses but we can do other things that ground us in the right here right now we might do really intense listening exercises seeing what we can hear we might plant our feet firmly on the ground and then think about our bum blunted firmly on the seat and do a bit of a whole body kind of work through there just feeling present in our bodies connecting with it noticing if we're holding any tension and just letting that go but these kind of grounding breathing calming exercises having the opportunity to visit revisit practices with children and young people these are great skills for them to take into other parts of their life and day as well but also when we do these regularly as a whole group it really brings everyone to that point of calm co-regulated ready to move on to the next thing so they can be super super effective i really hope you're able to put some of these ideas into practice let me know and let me know what other topics you would be interested in hearing in the future as well if you enjoyed today's episode please tell somebody about it if you like my work please share it i'm always really happy for you to take it make it your own share it as widely as possible that's the really best way that you can support my work and hopefully give a little gift of resources and so on to the people within your personal or professional network other ways that you can support my work if you like what i'm doing are to head over to patreon where you can join me for a pound a month or 10 pounds a year and be part of that little community who sees things first who get to influence most what i am creating and who just make me feel warm and lovely inside because it's such a kind thing to join that little community there and the other way you can support would be to ask me to deliver a webinar or come and join you in your setting or at your next event keynote speaking is my day to day joy so do ask me along either online or in real life always a joy to be with you guys okay i think with that that's all i have to say about that so until next time over