POWERING HOPE IN CHILDREN
Nurture Works Foundation Inc is excited to announce that YouthCARE will be taking over the running of BUZ school programs from 1 July 2024. Please direct all program related enquiries and school orders to their Perth office.
All other enquiries please email us at buz@buildupzone.com
BUZ Hope Program (Year 4 to 6)
The Focus of the BUZ Hope program is to help children develop skills to handle grief, loss and change in their lives.
Overcoming the storms in life and looking for the rainbow.
The BUZ Hope program works best for a normal
class group in a normal classroom setting or can
be adapted to smaller groups.
The program is designed to be conducted over 6 x 1 hour sessions.If you wish, you may extend the time for each session.
Children receive their own BUZ Hope journal.
BUZ Hope - Program Outcomes
Provide the students with the skills to:
• Build resilience and their own sense of hope & positivity
• Understand the nature of grief, loss and change
• Appreciate that grief, loss and change are a normal part of life
• Understand, express and appropriately deal with the feelings associated with grief, loss and change
• Understand the use of metaphors and symbols and develop metaphoric thinking that can help them through tough times
• Choose a rock and or other symbol of hope
• Know how to get support and who to get support from during tough times
• Use journaling as a tool to help overcome storms in life
• Use some basic breathing and meditation processes to bring healing and peace
BUZ HOPE PROGRAM SESSION OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN
• To warm the children up in the BUZ Circle and introduce them to the use of metaphors.
• Thinking about the kinds of things that could be considered as storms in their life.
• Converse with others to realise that problems and bad things happen to everyone.
• Introduce journaling and allow them to make their first journal entries.
• To reflect on the kinds of things that bring grief in theirs and others lives.
• To journal what storms have happened in their lives.
• To expand the metaphor of the storm to include the post storm activity including the rainbow and sunshine.
• Bringing children into a reflective mood. Allowing them to appreciate the warmth and respect of the BUZ Circle and thinking about what hope is.
• To provide children with a scenario/story where they can think about the feelings the boy in the story was experiencing as he went through a tough time, a storm in his life.
• To enjoy the knowledge that crying is good for you and that tears are a natural and healthy way of releasing feelings.
• Focus on some of the feelings mostly associated with grief and help children to realise that these feelings are natural and important.
• Consider metaphorically the notion and power of hope and be empowered by it.
• Look at a rainbow as a sign or metaphor of hope and to appreciate the healing in the sense of hope it brings.
• See beyond the hurt, pain and darkness and allow light to shine through in any dark situation.
• Acquire skills to look for the silver lining.
• Explore the notion that no matter how dark it is, the moment a small about of light is added it is no longer dark. Discover that light is more powerful than dark.
• Understand the importance of expressing feelings and not bottling them up.
• Think about the kinds of people who would be the best support for them in tough times and get them to make a choice about their support people.
• Opportunity to experiment, explore, discuss and develop deeper metaphoric thinking that will enable them to find pathways to healing:
1. The wonder of light through a prism and the formation of the colours of the spectrum.
2. A project that shows even in darkness there is a chance for colour and light to break through.
3. Experiment with the colour spectrum as Newton did many years ago.
4. Reflect on the feelings associated with grief and to have hands-on handicraft as a reminder.
5. Through bubble blowing learn controlled breathing and smiling to help overcome stressful situations;
6. Using vocabulary and creative thinking to explore the various stages of overcoming storms in life.
• Reflect on a beautiful story of grief that helps children see that people choose their own way of understanding and coping with things. People choose their own metaphors.
• Discover that a wish is something we long for that may never happen and a hope is something we can work towards, something that will help us think about a better tomorrow, something we can do something about.
• Build a vocabulary of hope and positive thinking through beautiful creative writing.
• Chose an expression or saying of hope that will inspire and comfort them.
• Introduce children to a simple form of reflection or meditation.
• Free journal writing or drawing.