Social Emotional Learning

5/7/2021

Suggested activities can be repeated and you can choose what to enjoy at any time during the week.

I hope you enjoy them!

Mindfulness

Mindfulness exercises can be done at any time! I generally guide the students in the beginning and sometimes at the end of each lesson. These brain based exercises can help bodies and brains remain calm and focused. This year's series of mindfulness exercises largely came from a collection titled "Little Renegades."

In May, our mindfulness exercise is Pig Belly Breaths or mindful breathing. Place both hands on your belly. Sit still and tall and inhale through your nose. Then exhale through your mouth. What happens to your hands as you breath in and out? See if you can let thoughts rise and fall with the breath. Repeat three times.

Intentional breathing gives us the ability to anchor the mind in the present moment and deal with life's challenges in a focus, calm, assertive way. This helps us understand that our breath can be the doorway into a more positive mindset that allows us to be fully present and accept feelings as they come and go. From Little Renegades, LLC

You can use this Diary Card, if you like, to keep track of the strategies your child uses to calm their bodies and brain. These are all of the strategies we've learned and practiced this year. They may not remember all of them but if they remember a small number, those tools may come in handy sometime!

Calming Lavender Scented Play Doh I happen to like the scent of lavender but if it is not your child's favorite, explore other scents! I do recall adding cinnamon around the holidays when my kids were little. Plus it keeps them busy while you get things done around the house!

Book Club

I Can Handle It by Laurie Wright This little story combines self talk and strategies to with a sprinkling of a growth mindset. Feel free to dialog with your child about the ideas shared to handle problems that come up. Any connections? Can you think of other problems where strategies helped (or could have helped?) I Can Handle It! coloring poster for a little extra fun!

What to Do When You Worry Too Much by Dawn Huebner, Ph.D. is a favorite interactive workbook to help students understand their worries and strategies to help overcome them. There are several chapters and we will be doing some of the worksheets during Social Group in most of our classes. I recommend watching one or two chapters at a time to get the most out of this title.

We will be using these reference sheets in the next several weeks to help kids gather their strategies onto a chart for easy reference. The Zones Tool Box with Strategies shows the "tool box" completely filled out with strategies to help when in that "zone" (e.g., blue - sad; green - happy; yellow - anxious, worried, confused; red - angry or "flipped lid.") The Zones Tool Box without Strategies will be filled out as part of Social Group. They will be sent home at the end of April (or early May.) Feel free to print a "Tool Box" out for use at home! And, when the "Tool Box" we create at school comes home, you may add and edit to fit your family's style.

For those students who have not heard Flipping A Lid , we will be covering this in the next couple of weeks. If you haven't seen this or would like to review it again, this is a very clearly laid out title explaining what happens in your brain when we get upset.

An oldie but goodie! Your child can color their Emotional Thermometer into "Zones" to match the "Tool Box." Just another tool to help navigate rough patches. More from "Inside Out." This Inside Out Printable Poster follows the same model as the "Zones of Regulation" and is a nice way for your child to share how he or she may feel.

Zen Den

How to Make Good Choices What you say and what you do can make others have thoughts and feelings about you. Thinking about the impact your choice has on others is part of learning "Social Thinking." Sneak preview: Stop, take a deep breath and then let your Wise Owl help you figure out the best choice!

Recreational SEL

Are Butterflies Only Animal That Start Out As Caterpillars? Mystery Science offers another interesting look at nature! and how different animals change. If you think about it, we all change over the course of our lives - change is a big part of being alive. Reflect with your child how he or she has changed throughout their lives. And, then think about the changes that lie ahead! Exciting!

Here are a set of cute affirmation posters for coloring. These are common phrases or comments used for "self-talk" another way to encourage one's self as kids navigate rough patches. Enjoy!

Parent's Corner

How Mindful Practices Help Neurodiverse Children with Impulse Control, Make Social Learning Stick

This article does a nice job of breaking down some benefits of mindful practices. Because the children I work with are young and "practice makes perfect", rather than have a mindful activity/exercise for each day, I have one for each month. That makes it more likely they will recall an exercise in the moment. In either case, this site seems to have some helpful parenting tips - at least I hope you think so too!