A student I was working with individually wanted to try out different coping skills to use at school when she started to feel worried. Thinking of the things for which she is grateful was one that really worked for her, so I decided to introduce a gratitude mandala into our session, which she will be able to use and reference when she needs to cope during the school day.

I printed out a mandala from printmandala.com, which has tons of free options. I explained to the student that she would be writing anything that she was thankful for on the mandala, and she could decorate it any way she wanted {the student loved art activities, so this worked really well for her}.

I used the copy machine to shrink the mandala with her words to half of it’s original size, and I made it into a keychain using a hole punch and a rubber band after laminating it {see above}. The student has been keeping the keychain on her pencil pouch zipper and the larger mandala in her assignment pad. It has helped her to stay grounded during the school day since she has a quick reference of the good things in her life.