The Path of Zest

In this zone we create a sensory path that’ll get us moving, jumping and swimming!

Practice 1: Deep belly breathing

After your path of zest, try a little Deep Belly Breathing to rest and relax.

This is a great practice to do daily. For example, coming back from lunch, you can sing ‘We are all the leaves of one tree’ and do three rounds of deep belly breathing before you start the next lesson.

The forest floor

Here, we explore different textures, sounds, colours and smells to imaginatively connect with the forest floor.

Practice 2: Rabbit

Here we get to explore our breathing by imagining ourselves as a rabbit!

Forest Noises

Listen to these 8 noises from the forest and woodland - what might be making them? The answers are at the bottom of this page.

Caring for our hearts

We create sensory bags to cover over key messages about our precious hearts. Then we can push back colours and glitters to discover the messages.

Practice 3: Loving Kindness

This practice helps us to feel cared for and to offer care to others. It’s good to be very gentle with ourselves: sometimes we don’t feel so loving, and that’s okay! Doing the Ocean Breath practice is a good self-care practice when are hearts are feeling closed up.

Hope bubbles

Hope is a really important energy for our wellbeing. Here we connect with a hope for our Earth, and we think of a practical step that we can take to help realize our hope.

Practice 4: Imaginature

Imagination + Nature = Imaginature! With this practice we can explore part of the Earth and deepen our understanding.

Flower watering

In this zone we connect with gratitude, and express our appreciation for someone in our life. The most important flower to water - is you! We can draw, write or collage our expressions of appreciation, and display them in our classroom to remind ourselves of our goodness.

Practice 5: Flower Watering

This practice of appreciation is demonstrated in the Zone Five video above. You also have a Flower Watering printable in your Festival Pack that goes through the steps.

Creating a quiet space

Quiet and stillness are very important for our hearts. You can create a quiet space with some sensory toys or other objects, sounds or scents that help you to feel safe and relaxed.

Thank you for joining us!

We’d LOVE to hear how you get on with the festival.

You can tag in Fingal Libraries and Orlaith online and use the hashtag #HappySensesFest

My special thanks to:

• Jennifer, Lilian and the whole team at Blanchardstown Library

• Fingal Libraries and the Dormant Accounts Fund for making this possible

• Jack Frazer and Molly Frazer, who brought so much energy and wisdom to this space