Zones of Regulation®
At Larchwood Farm Nature Camp we practice the Zones of Regulation® with our campers to help them develop an awareness of feelings, their levels of energy/alertness, and tools/strategies for emotional regulation and prosocial skills. The zones offer an easy way to talk and think about feelings and categorize them into four color-coded zones. On the first day of camp we explain what all the zones are, and then each day we play games which reinforce their usage. We encourage our parents to learn the Zones of Regulation® curriculum in order to continue its usage at home.
What are the Zones?
Blue Zone: This zone represents feelings that are low alertness such as bored, sad, tired or sick.
Green Zone: This zone represents feelings that are an ideal level of alertness such as calm, focused, happy, okay. This is the level where kids are ready to learn. This is the level where emotional regulation strategies should be taught.
Yellow Zone: This zone represents feelings with a heightening level of alertness such as frustrated, anxious, fearful, stressed, silly or excited. This is the level where emotional regulation strategies should be introduced to prevent escalation into the red zone.
Red Zone: This zone represents feelings with an extremely heightened level of alertness such as rage, explosive behavior, terror, panic, or elation. At this level there is a loss of control and it is very difficult to introduce emotional regulation strategies.
It is important not to teach the premise that one zone is better than the others. For example, we don’t want to teach that the red zone is bad because we don’t want the child to feel shame or embarrassment if they enter red as it is often out of their control.
How to Utilise the Zones of Regulation® at Home
An example of how to reinforce these zones at home would be to ask throughout a story which zone your child thinks the characters in the story are in; depending on the zone you can ask them what strategies they think the character could use, or point out what strategies the character uses.
Model the zones yourself: for example, if you are feeling frustrated in front of your child you can say “I feel frustrated and I’m in the yellow zone so I’m going to take three deep breaths.”
Print out a Zones of Regulation chart to put on your fridge and place magnets for each member of the family on the zone that best represents your feelings that day to create a sort of check in system.
For more information on the Zones of Regulation® please consult the official Zones of Regulation® website: https://zonesofregulation.com/index.html
