How to be grateful no matter what!

This coming Thursday, people in the USA 🇺🇸 and some other places are going to celebrate Thanksgiving Day 🦃🍁🍰 so we couldn’t avoid talking about the importance of this holiday. Alana Underwood, an American VSPP, shared some traditions of her family and told how beneficial it was to be thankful for everything and everyone. How giving thanks helps people feel better ❤️‍🩹 and even more, it might change someone’s life. She also shared some great prompts for a gratitude journal 📝 in the chat. After that we focused on a practical side - we looked through some tips how to move from journaling to behavior and after that we played a “Gratitude game”.

Why we remember and forget

Why do some people remember everything🙋🏼‍♀️but the others forget 🤷‍♀️?

During our English Speaking Practice for adults we talked about memory and had the discussion on this topic. After that we came to a conclusion that living a stressful life might be one of the reasons why we forget things. So it’s really important to take care of your mental health, have some time to relax and recharge your batteries 🔋. As usual we learned some advanced idioms and practiced them sharing our experiences.

What tips can you name to boost your memory?

Inside Out - feel all your emotions

What is your strongest emotion? -this question we were asked by our American friend, a VSPP, Alana Underwood. Almost everyone in our group said that joy is their common feeling despite challenges they’re facing today. We looked through different scenarios which were in the movie “Inside Out” and compared them to our everyday life. It helped us to think about our emotions and find out the importance of feeling them all. We also discussed how much control we have over them and what to do to get better.

Board games as the way of therapy

Have you ever thought about games as a way to recharge your batteries 🪫? Of course, there’s another bad thing about playing games - addiction. Thus you have to be really careful when you choose what to play and how long it might take. Our friend, a VSPP, Alana Underwood prepared two speaking activities for our youth which help everyone relax and get to know each other better. While we’re rolling the dice we could cover different essential topics to discuss - family and friends; books and tv shows; education and school; travel etc. All students were excited to see the answers and shared some memorable moments with each other.

They are so sweet and kind. Love working with them.

Music to my ears

Is there anything similar between reading 📖 and music 🎶? How these activities affect your mental and physical well being? Our meeting with an American VSPP, Alana Underwood, helped youth from Kherson and Mariupol regions find lots of benefits of these pastimes. After the discussion, Alana being a therapist and physiologist in Texas, decided to insert some exercises to help everyone feel calm and less stressed. So we did some breathing exercises for a while and shared some other ways to feel relaxed. After the meeting all participants got some useful expressions related to the topic and chatted on our Telegram Group with each other.