Whole Child Development
When the practice of time-out first made its appearance on the child guidance stage, it was introduced as an alternative to corporeal punishment, the preferred method of the day for helping children see the error of their ways. In this context, the nuance was a huge step forward. Unfortunately, many, parents and teachers alike, have fixated on time-out and the result is a method run amok.
Here’s a quick one for those of you looking for more mail-themed reads. Raymond and Nelda is a story of….well, Raymond and Nelda, of course! They’re best of friends but have a falling out. Their neighborhood mail lady sees both of them upset and urges them to work it out. Through a series of letters they eventually come to understand that they each made mistakes and need to apologize because their friendship is more important than their pride. This book is great for tying together the themes of friendship and communication!
You could follow this book up with a variety of mail-themed activities, but I usually have a short discussion about the social aspect of the books (being a good friend and making apologies) and then build some pre-reading skills by doing a little phonemic awareness exercise in small groups.
Back in 1914, a five year-old little girl by the name of Charlotte May Pierstorff wanted desperately to visit her grandmother, but her parents couldn’t afford the $1.55 it would cost for a train ticket. Soon her family hatched an ingenious plan and, with the help of a cousin who worked on the mail car of the train and some creative application of the postal code, May was sent by parcel post with 53 cents in stamps on her coat. This true story is told in wonderful narrative fashion and with beautifully detailed watercolor illustrations in the book, Mailing May , written by Michael O. Tunnell and illustrated by Ted Rand.
If you haven’t heard of Signing Time, you should check it out. It has an inspiring background story, and the research behind preverbal signing in hearing children can be quite compelling. Though they are oblivious to all of that, my boys just really enjoy it, and that’s why we’ve watched many episodes at our house. It’s a fun and dynamic mix of vocabulary, song, and sign.
Do you remember how excited you were to get mail as a child? The mail system seemed magical and mystical. You might get a package from Grandma, an invitation to a birthday party, or a letter from a secret admirer. The possibilities were endless! In these days of email and text messages, children still love to get mail! Here’s a great mail activity that will give them the opportunity to get and send mail while also getting some practice with recognizing and forming their written names.
Do you remember how excited you were to get mail as a child? The mail system seemed magical and mystical. You might get a package from Grandma, an invitation to a birthday party, or a letter from a secret admirer. The possibilities were endless! In these days of email and text messages, children still love to get mail! Here’s a great mail activity that will give them the opportunity to get and send mail while also getting some practice with recognizing and forming their written names.
Ahh, February! The kiddos have just gotten over the withdrawal symptoms caused by the sudden drop in blood sugar levels after Christmas, so of course it’s the perfect time for another confectionary holiday!
Now, I’m a middle of the roader when it comes to holidays and preschool. I don’t quite agree with the notion that they should be completely abolished from school. They are what kids are interested in, and I believe curriculum should emerge from the child’s interests. Though, I also don’t agree with the idea that a holiday is an appropriate curriculum theme in and of itself for an extended period of time. So I like to take the holiday and find connections to other social or science based themes. As I think of Valentine’s Day, I think of friendship and writing and sending notes and letters. I think of the social skills involved in creating and maintaining human relationships. These are skills children need to develop. (While we’re at it, there are plenty of adults who could use a course on those skills as well!)
Have you ever frustrated or angry? I mean really frustrated or angry? Almost beyond words? Doesn’t that just add to the aforementioned frustration? Well, imagine being a child. (It shouldn’t be too hard, I’m pretty sure you were one once.) Young children are bombarded with emotions just as intense as our own – if not more so as they are not tempered with the same reason and justification we can sometimes muster. These little ones feel just as frustrated and angry as we ever could, but have even less of an ability to verbalize it. Too often, that results in some other manifestation or communication of the emotion. This is when we usually see the tantrums, the biting, the hitting, the kicking, etc., etc., etc. How do we as adults usually respond? We swoop in, console the victim and cite the offender, lecturing them about that behavior. We see it as a failure to behave properly, when often, it is a failure to communicate properly.
Teachers and parents of young children are notoriously good problem-solvers. When discontent arises, we swoop in, assess the situation, and set timers, create turn-taking lists, grab another item for sharing, or utilize some other method from our bag of tricks. We are so good at problem solving because we get so much practice! This is all well and good, and at times a skill of survival, but to truly benefit children for the long run, it is ideal to involve them in the problem solving process. It may slow things down a bit, but eventually you will find that you are “swooping in” less and less as the children build their own sets of social problem-solving skills and become more independent.
Often what is needed to head off a full-blown melt-down is just a little humor to lighten things up and regain perspective. Let me give you an example. Recently, I had spent a full day washing every dirty article of clothing in our house. A small feat in itself. I hadn’t, however, folded any of it yet. So at the end of the day, I was exhausted, folding laundry on my bed, just trying to get to the bottom of it so I could climb in! Well, my five year-old came in, with body language and a voice that conveyed that he just might try a bit of whining and fit-throwing to get his way as he said, “But I wanted to sit there!” I responded that the bed was “closed”. Then realizing the humor, said, “Get it? The bed is closed with clothes!” He paused for a moment, then his five year-old logic grasped it and his whole demeanor changed. He visibly relaxed, laughed a bit, and then moved to another part of the room to settle in and talk to me about something else.
Humor is an excellent distraction. It lightens the mood and shifts attention, often facilitating either natural or adult-prompted redirection. It’s not always the children who are the ones who need to lighten up. They’re naturals at funny business. In fact, I recently read that, on average, a child laughs 300 times each day, while an adult laughs only 15 times each day. So it’s logical that humor would be a natural tool to use when working with children.
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