Social and Emotional Wellness Swag Bags:
Promoting Family Well-Being and Connection
This session offers a unique strategy educators can use to work together with families toward their wellness goals. Together, we will explore mindfulness activities such as mindful walking, mindful doodling, the five senses mindful moment and mindfulness based visual arts and movement. These can include sensory awareness, embodied kinesthetics, exploring silence and stillness, and listening to sounds. Participants will create their own wellness swag bags which will provide essential resources and education for helping family members guide their children in managing emotional arousal and teaching coping strategies for self-regulation. Wellness bag might include items such as dry erase boards, feelings mats, feeling stickers, emotion puppets, clay, scented bubbles, and children's books about emotions.
Who is Julienne Ugalde?
Julienne Ugalde
Julienne A. Ugalde, M.S. Early Childhood Education, M.S. Clinical Psychology, LMHC
Julienne A. Ugalde is a LMHC (Licensed Mental Health Clinician) in the state of Massachusetts. For over 45 years, she has been involved in the Early Childhood Education field as an infant and toddler teacher, preschool teacher, preschool director, after-school instructor, and college professor. She has had the opportunity to present at the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children), Annual Expo and Conference for 12 consecutive years and enjoys facilitating social and emotional developmental workshops to educators at childcare experts.
Julienne is an expressive arts therapist. In her clinical work, she teaches children coping skills by using the visual arts as a means of expression with clay, collage, weaving, drawing, and painting. Currently, Julienne works as a mental health specialist at MOC (Making Opportunities Count) Early Head Start/Head Start. Her role includes working closely with the educators in the toddler and preschool classrooms embedding proactive and preventative social and emotional strategies to support developmentally appropriate play engagement and well-being. She meets with family members regularly to support their efforts at home in addressing their children’s unique developmental needs. She also offers mental health wellness interventions for children, family members, and the workforce.