Monica M. Jackman: Mindfulness for Preschool and Kindergarten: The OpenMind Program to Boost Social-Emotional Learning and Classroom Engagement. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., Oakland, CA, 2022, 280 pp

Excerpt

Social-emotional development in early childhood lays the groundwork for children’s later adjustment (Durlak et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2015). To strengthen their foundation for social and emotional wellness, numerous programs have recently been developed for young children (e.g., Blewitt et al., 2021). Among these programs, the OpenMind for Preschool and Kindergarten (OMPK) stands out as a mindfulness curriculum not only to promote young children’s social-emotional learning, but also to support adult educators, helping professionals, and caregivers in cultivating mindful learning environments, fostering inclusion, and managing their own stress. Originally developed in the USA, the OMPK is a secular curriculum of mindfulness for young children. Previous findings show that the OMPK is feasible and effective in enhancing children’s social-emotional learning (Jackman et al., 2019). The program has also been contextualized for preschools in Korea and yielded feasibility (Kim et al., 2019a), parental social validity (Kim et al., 2019b), and effectiveness in promoting emotion regulation, resilience, and prosocial behaviors (Kim et al., 2020). As such, the OMPK has received practical and academic interests in both Eastern and Western contexts. …