Category:
- Mental Wellness 🧠
- Social Wellness 🧑🤝🧑
- Spiritual Wellness 🙏
Age Groups
- Grade 4-6
- Grade 7-9
Introduction
Laughter is strong medicine! A good laugh releases endorphins, which helps to reduce stress, anxiety, grief, anger and depression. In Indigenous communities and cultures, laughing and humour are an integral part of storytelling, games, songs and social interactions.
Objective
Recognize the benefits of laughter for the body, heart, mind and spirit.
Materials
- Reference for game: Animal Muk
Steps
To play the Inuit game Animal Muk, you will need a minimum of 4 people.
- Choose 6 animal sounds or actions that are common to your region.
- Form a circle with 1 person standing in the middle. The person in the middle has to try and make a person in the outer circle smile or laugh by making animal sounds or actions. Eye contact between the person in the middle and the person they selected from the circle must be maintained at all times.
- If the person from the circle smiles, laughs or breaks eye contact, they will take their turn in the middle and try to make someone else from the circle smile or laugh.
- No physical contact is allowed.
Reflection
- What or who makes you laugh?
- Where does your sense of humour come from?
- How does laughing make you feel in your body, heart, mind and spirit?
Extension
Invent a new game, story or joke to make people laugh.