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Whole Child Development

A Behavior Problem-Solving Approach: Positive Guidance for Preschoolers

by Filed Under: Positive Guidance and Social Skills, Uncategorized 8 Comments

child

Preschool children often confound us with their behavior.  They’re playing and laughing one minute, and crying “for no reason” the next.  We ask them not to poke their baby brother’s eyes, and they look right at us, with angelic faces, and do it anyway.  What is going on?  It can be a baffling, maddening process to try to answer that question!  I’m going to be adding a series of posts, linked from here as well, in an effort to give you a few more tools for observing, understanding, and approaching child behaviors using the positive guidance philosophy and techniques.  Here’s what you have to look forward to:

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Story-Acting with the Sneetches

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Celebrate!, Learning through Play and Experience, Music and Movement, Positive Guidance and Social Skills 2 Comments

DSCN2411

It’s no secret, I love Dr.Seuss.  From a young age, I became enamoured with his silliness and his rollicking rhymes.  As I studied education and child development, I fell in love again as I realized how beneficial his playful prose were for building young readers (learn more about phonological awareness here).  I would say Dr. Seuss is the Shakespeare of childhood.  Any well-read (or well-read-to) child should be familiar with him!

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Book Activity: Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Create, Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills Leave a Comment

I really enjoy Kevin Henkes’ books, and I know the children do too.  His clever, relatable storylines revolve around quirky, lovable characters, who often have their own hilarious comic-strip-style comments in addition to the regular text.  Chrysanthemum is the story of a girl (or more accurately, a mouse) aptly named Chrysanthemum.  She really loves her name, until she goes to school.  There, she is teased about it, until the other girls make a discovery that makes them wish they were named after flowers as well.  It’s a great book for talking about social skills, not teasing in particular, but also fantastic for talking about our individual names.

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Teaching Social Skills: “Can I Play”

by Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills 5 Comments

puppets

I am a firm believer that social skills should be taught directly, and then implemented and brought into habit through play and experience.  During the very first weeks, I introduce the tools for entering play and taking turns.  These are key areas of social conflict when you get a group of new preschoolers together!

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Teaching Social Skills: "Can I Play"

by Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills 9 Comments

puppets

I am a firm believer that social skills should be taught directly, and then implemented and brought into habit through play and experience.  During the very first weeks, I introduce the tools for entering play and taking turns.  These are key areas of social conflict when you get a group of new preschoolers together!

[Read more…]

Willoughby Wallaby Woo

by Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience, Music and Movement, Positive Guidance and Social Skills Leave a Comment

elephantI’m sure you can find other versions of this song, but does anyone really do it better than Raffi?  Willoughby Wallaby Woo, is a great song for practicing new names in a class.  As an added benefit, it is also great for getting kiddos to laugh!  As you can hear in this YouTube clip, it’s a simple silly song, using consonant substitution (a great pre-reading skill) to fit each name into the song.  This is particularly fun if you have an elephant puppet to set above each child as you sing that child’s name.  (If the elephant reference doesn’t make sense, you need to listen to the clip!) 

You can download the song from Raffi’s Singable Songs for the Very Young album, available at iTunes.  You might as well pick up a few more Raffi classics while you’re there.  The man is a genius!

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Ah-Ah-Ah-Choo! Teaching Preschoolers How NOT to Share

by Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills Leave a Comment

sneeze

As teachers of young children, we’ve all been there.  Dodging sneezy spit particles, heading straight for us at 100 miles per hour.  Or stealthily intercepting a cracker before it goes from being coughed on to being shared with a best friend.  We will stay healthier, and the children we teach will stay healthier if we start out the year teaching the children to properly wash their hands with soap, and to “catch” their sneezes and coughs in their elbows.   (This is better than covering with hands, as that simply puts germs on their paws.  That’s not very helpful in a “HANDS-ON” classroom!) 

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What’s in the Number Bag?

by Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills Leave a Comment

bagI’m trying something new this year, in an attempt to combine a little bit of a show-and-tell opportunity and a numeracy activity.  I’m calling my experiment “The Number Bag”.  You might want to try it out too, and let me know how it works for you!

My magical, mystical number bag is simply a cloth drawstring bag.  The bag is sent home with a card with a number  written on it (1-5 for starters), along with the activity instructions in case any parents need a reminder.  The child can bring anything they want in that quantity.  For example, for the number 3 they may want to bring three toy cars or three cool rocks.    (I will let parents know that if their child has something really special they want to share, they are welcome to use some creativity to make it work for the number bag.  For example, if the child has a new doll she wants to share, but has the number 3, you might put in three dresses the doll might wear, or a dress with three buttons, and then include the doll to share as well.  Or send the doll along with two other dolls of some kind.) 

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