Karin Lucia Gisler and Karim Kaufman are offering a 1-day coming of age program for year 5 & 6 kids at primary schools, focusing on puberty and emotional changes, and how to deal with them in an age appropriate way.
During puberty and adolescence our children are going through big physical, emotional, and hormonal changes. This can be an overwhelming and challenging time for them. We would like to bring awareness to what is happening during this time and create a sense of excitement and celebration.
What we experience during this time can have a big impact on us and on how we transition into the next stage of life, adolescence, young adult, and adulthood.
The program: Supporting students to make healthy choices throughout adolescence and later on in life. Celebrating our amazing self (our amazing bodies and who we are)!
We want our children to be inspired and have the best possible lives for themselves. We want them to be supported and guided to become healthy, informed and confident adults.
The program's focus is addressing these changes in an age appropriate way, helping to prepare the young people for what is to come and giving them information to make the transition smoother.
We share stories, use games and activities to make the program fun and dynamic.
We delivered this workshop previously at Main Arm Upper Public School and we are excited to be offering it again this year. The day program involves activities with boys and girls together, and then opportunities for the boys and girls to break off separately to do different exercises before coming back together at the end of the day.
This is a fun and experiential program!
Some main topics covered include:
Understanding the changes during puberty
Explore fears and anxieties about adolescence and ways to deal with them
Emotional 1st Aid ideas
Celebration of our unique self
Importance of friends and who to go to for support
With the girls separately we also explore:
Hormonal, energetic and emotional changes throughout the menstrual cycle
Self-care during period and our menstrual cycle
Information on menstrual supply
Understanding our cyclic nature
Craft activity
In my experience as a mentor for girls, I have seen the many benefits of providing young girls with appropriate information and the positive impact this has had on the them, such as:
Self-care awareness
Confidence and excitement in becoming a woman
Self acceptance, sense of belonging, and acceptance of others
Improvement of health and wellbeing by honouring our cyclic nature
Sense of celebration about who we are
A big part of the program is trying to give the children an understanding that it is normal and perfectly OK for these changes to be occurring. We aim to give them a frame of reference and to identify supports for themselves during this time.
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Karim is a local Youth and Family Worker who has over ten years experience working with young people assisting them to make this transition to young adulthood. Running boy’s groups at local schools, parenting coaching, Rites of passage, and wellbeing programs and in the shire and internationally.
Karin Lucia Gisler is a youth mentor and the creator of a variety of coming of age program for girls offered in Mullumbimby (and beyond). She completed an international training led by Katherine Krueger (Journey of Young Women) that prepares women to become mentors for girls and to facilitate girl circles. This training offers an abundance of material, ideas and inspiration for a holistic coming of age education. Karin is also a graduate student of the School of Shamanic Womancraft, and about to complete her Diploma in Youth Work.