Hi friends! My name is Mila! I just finished Kindergarten and am going into grade one! I'm really excited to be starting school again!

Last year in Kindergarten, my friends and I learned some really important things that we want to share with you!

Even though we really loved Kindergarten, we sometimes had a hard time making strong decisions because our feelings felt too big.

Another word for feelings is emotions. Every day, everyone around us experiences a lot of different emotions, like being happy, sad, mad, frustrated, nervous or even excited. It is okay for us to have all of these emotions.

My friends and I would like to tell you about some times when we made some decisions we aren't proud of because our emotions felt too big.

Sometimes our emotions get so big though, that they can impact the decisions that we make! We have to work really hard to make sure we keep thinking about our decisions instead of just acting on our emotions.

The swings are my favourite thing on the playground! One recess I was so excited to get time on the swings that I pushed my friend out of the way so that I could get to the swings first. I hurt my friend and I felt really bad afterwards. 

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I really love building with the blocks we have in our classroom! One day, my friend was using all of the blocks to build a huge tower. I was so mad that there were no blocks left for me! I kicked his tower over. That made my friend sad. 

It was my turn for Show and Tell and I was really nervous to stand in front of the class. When my teacher asked me a question about my Show and Tell it was like my brain froze and I couldn't think of anything to say. I felt embarrassed.

Art is my favourite thing to do at school. I feel disappointed when we have to clean up to move on to the next activity. Once, when my teacher told our class it was time to clean up our art supplies and come to carpet for a Math lesson, I ran out of the classroom because I didn't want to be finished with art. Cleaning up makes me frustrated.

In all of these stories, our emotions made us feel out of control. Our emotions were so big that our brains were not able to make strong decisions. We disappointed ourselves, our friends and our teacher. We really want to learn how to make stronger decisions.

Humans have emotions to help keep us alive! A long time ago, humans had to use their emotions to make sure that they stayed safe from danger. If they were being attacked by a wild animal, they had to fight them off, run from them, or hide from them.

We still use our emotions to help keep us safe. Sometimes, when something happens to us that we don't like, or that we aren't expecting, our brains think that we are in danger. When we're kids, our brains are still learning how to tell the difference between something that is really dangerous and something that is challenging, but safe. Our teacher told us that this is called Emotional Regulation. Let us tell you a little bit about what we learned!

Your amygdala is a small almond shaped structure deep inside the front side of your brain. It belongs to a part of the brain that we call the Limbic System. 

There is a special part of our brain called the amygdala. Its job is to always be looking around for danger. Our emotions tell us important information about our environment. If our emotions tell us that something is wrong, our amygdala is kind of like a security guard who tells everyone when there is a risk of being hurt.

Image retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVvMSwsOXPw

When there is a risk of danger and our amygdala is trying to keep us safe, we will either fight, flight or freeze. The flight response means you run away from the danger. Just like humans would have done in the past, if you were on the playground and a bear walked by, your security guard amygdala would respond by telling your body to:

Fight the bear.

Run away from the bear. 

Freeze or hide from the bear.

Although our problems at school sometimes feel really big because we have big emotions when they happen, they are usually not as dangerous as a bear on the playground. It is not okay for us to fight, run away or just sit doing nothing at school. We need to learn to not let our amygdala be in charge all of the time.

So if we aren't supposed to let our amygdala be in charge, who should be? Let us tell you all about another very important part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex! 

This is a picture of the prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex is a large part of your brain that is right at the front, just above your eyes and behind your forehead.

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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Prefrontal_cortex_of_the_brain.png

The prefrontal cortex is the smart, thinking center of your brain! It helps you to make strong decisions, focus, and learn! Even though the prefrontal cortex is the smart part of our brain, we have to work really hard to learn how to let it be the leader and decision-maker. Our amygdala can act faster than our prefrontal cortex when we are younger because our prefrontal cortex is not finished growing yet. It actually won't be finished growing until we're 25!

Our amygdala, the security guard of our brain and our prefrontal cortex, the smart part of our brain, talk to each other using pathways called neurons. Neurons are like a road that information can travel on in our brains!

Our prefrontal cortex uses the information that it gets from our amygdala to tell our body how we should act. It also decides if we are in real danger or if something challenging, but safe, is happening to us. As we get older, we learn how to let our prefrontal cortex be in charge, instead of our amygdala.

When we are young, the roadways between our amygdala and our prefrontal cortex are still being built! That is why, when our emotions tell our amygdala that we're in danger, it acts right away without talking to the prefrontal cortex to decide if we are in real danger and about how we should respond to our emotions. 

Each time we practice using our prefrontal cortex when we are having big emotions, another part of our brain, called the hippocampus, builds memories of these times. Our hippocampus is kind of like a camera that records our memories and stores them in our brain for later. The next time that we are having big emotions, our hippocampus will help us remember how to make sure our prefrontal cortex is in charge.

The hippocampus looks like a seahorse and is right behind your amygdala.