Guiding Behavior

“Writing” About Feelings

What do you do when you are overwhelmed with emotion?

 I tend to journal a prayer or call a close friend.

Kids definitely get overwhelmed with emotions at times.  In fact, your child could be kicking and screaming for your attention right now as you read this post!

The teacher that I am believes that every moment could be a teaching moment and maybe you can turn this lack of communication into a writing activity that enables your child to express their feelings in another way. Besides, writing doesn’t begin with formation and technique, it begins with scribbles and pictures!

So get out a notebook, a piece of paper, an easel, or a sketchbook and after appropriately dealing with behavior (I’m a fan of super-nanny’s technique myself), allow your little one to express his/her emotions in a constructive way.

Afterwards, write on the back what your little one said in verbatim and the date because it is like keeping a diary or keepsake book.

Use this activity when your child is overwhelmed with excitement as well; you want your little one to express the highs of his/her day too!

Before you do this activity, another fun incorporation is to read a book on feelings to them so they start to have a bird’s eye view of their emotions.  I love the book Yesterday I Had The Blues by Jeron Ashford Frame so maybe you can stop by the Library when your running errands today! Yesterday I Had the Blues

Here are some snapshots in action:

 One of my former students painting about her happy feelings.

A candid shot of me sharing the completed feelings book with all the friends who made it!

Another student reading her personalized page in the Feelings book to a classmate.

Read A Songbook!

I love to sing.  More than that, I love to sing to kids.  Whether I am singing “This is the way we pick up our toys…”

Or “This is the day the Lord has made…”

Kids seem to be mesmerized by music, and shame on me, but they are so pleasant when they are in a trance. 

Today, I want to help you mesmerize your little one for academic purposes, and maybe even for a quiet car ride on an errand run.

 The cheap-o that I am will warn you that you may want to invest in a binder and sheet protectors for today’s activity, but you can technically do without it. 

This is a songbook that I made for my sweet little friend Carsyn.  I wanted it to be meaningful because I was filling it with a lot of educational songs too.  So I simply uploaded a picture of her into a word document and picked a fun font  (Kristin ITC).

Then I simply picked the songs that I targeted with the skills I wanted to teach her at the time.  The FREE printables for these songs can be found at Kelly’s Kindergarten, Kid’s Count under School Is Cool Big Books , New Jack Hartmann Big Books, and Dr. Jean Big Books, as well as  Dr. Jean.org.

Print them and put them together in sheet protectors back to back. 

The book will be unique depending on the songs you pick. 

If you are an over-achiever like me, you can download the songs you picked to print and make a CD that goes with the book.  Or find a friend who has a lot of children’s songs on their computer and borrow.

 **Sing-along books are great for SO many reasons**

Sing-along books:

  • Make it easy to follow along with the pictures and words.
  • Engage and maintain a child’s interest.
  • Help children follow along with print, one word at a time (one-to-one correspondence).
  • Teach children to read independently and with purpose.
  • Teach skills through rote memory (just from hearing a “Days of the Week” song over and over a child will memorize and learn the days of the week).
  • Help kids connect stories with pictures.

 “Carsyn loves her songbook! She reads it all the time. She loves to sing along and read it to her little sister.” ~Kasey of Baton Rouge, La

The Starter songbook I made for Carsyn were the following picks:

  1. Alphardy –sing to learn Album by dr jean  (Letter Naming and Sounds Awareness)
  2. Down by the bay – raffi singable songs (Rhyming)
  3. Color farm –sing to learn (Colors and Color Word Recognition)
  4. The Shape Song – Shape-A-Loo song fromTotally Math by dr jean (Shape Identification)
  5. Five Fish – Sing Silly Songs Album by dr jean (Adding On)
  6. Chant and write – totally math Album by dr jean (Number Identification and Formation)
  7. Today is Sunday –dr jean and friends Album (Days of the Week)
  8. The twelve days of school –keep on singing and dancing Album by dr Jean (Ordinal Numbers)

Patterns (Round 2)

Following up on the “Pattern Introduction” post, here is an activity and some info on the next phase of introducing patterns….

Before we start, if you have been doing the rhythmic patterns I want you to practice some more, introducing the letters ABC.

So you might clap, snap, snap, clap, snap, snap while saying “A, B, B, A, B, B” because you are doing one thing and then another so you move to a different letter of the alphabet to name that movement, and so on and so on.  This is due to the fact that universally movement patterns, color patterns, and shape patterns are often represented using the letters of the alphabet. 

You can teach them this by saying “If I am doing two motions then I need two letters to stand for them so I am going to use the first two letters of the alphabet ‘A’ and ‘B’.  Let’s try an AB pattern: stomp with the right foot, stomp with the left foot, but lets use the letters to stand for our stomping, ‘A, B, A, B’ while stomping left, right, left, right.  If I clap when I say ‘A’ and I snap when I say B then it would sound like this ‘A, B, B, A, B, B’ but if I made up a beat with 3 movements then I would need the next letter in the alphabet to stand for the new movement: Touch your head, shoulders, knees, head, shoulders, knees…. ‘A, B, C, A, B, C.’”

So, the next phase of patterns is allowing some symbol (like letters) to represent the movement, but other than introducing letters verbally as we just have as a listening and doing activity, we are going to incorporate visual representations of the movement.  So your child is going to follow a pattern, by looking at pictures, not just listening and following along with you.

Here are 3 separate patterns to follow, click on the image and print it out; see if your child can tell what movements to do by “reading” the directions: 

Take pictures of your child doing other movements, put them into a word document in a pattern, and print.  Your child will have so much fun with that!

Introducing the Concept of Pattern

Don’t write me off too soon! I have talked to a lot of moms of my kindergarten students who practically want to punch me in the face if I spend too long on this subject of patterns.  They say “My child worked on patterns in Pre-K, and he (or she) picked up on it very quickly.”

Trust me, I understand, I teach the subject over and over again so I can also get a little burnt out on patterns myself, but as a teacher let me talk to you for a moment about patterns so you hopefully won’t roll your eyes with each pattern post.

When your little one learns about patterns he/she gets so excited and thrilled to practice this skill because it gives order and predictability to activities, and how things in life work together in general.  After the concept of pattern is developed, children can predict that Tuesday comes after Monday, lunch comes after breakfast, and eventually they will learn that the number system is based on a pattern understanding that 12 comes after 11 because the tens place stays the same and the ones place follows a pattern of 1, 2, 3, etc.

So, the whole AB, AABB, ABC pattern lesson is a means to understanding the bigger picture of observing patterns in everyday life.

If your child understands certain aspects of patterns….GREAT….build on that.  There is usually an aspect of patterns that can be taught to add to one learned.

First, patterns can be taught in rhythmic motion such as listening to a beat and predicting what might come next.  Then, patterns are taught using color, shape, and arrangement.  Then, patterns can incorporate a letter symbol.  Then, patterns can be taught by extending all those skills with a higher level of difficulty.  Then, patterns can be taught using numbers.  Additionally, with these understandings, patterns can be observed naturally through everyday occurrences such as waking and sleeping, days of the week, seasons of the year, etc..

The main lesson in teaching patterns is that something repeats itself.  So remember the “I do, We do, You do” teaching skill from the post “Math on my Fingers” today you are going to:

1) Start a pattern to a beat such as “Clap, pat (your legs), clap, pat, clap, pat……

Rhythm Pattern

2) Ask your child to join in; continue on for a minute or so.  Then you are going to add the words saying “Clap, Pat, Clap, pat….”

3) “Let’s do another pattern using our bodies” Ideas: stomp, tap your head, snap, nod, tap your shoulders, flap your arms, etc.

4) Ask your child if they would like to come up with one for you or a family member to do. If your child does not follow a pattern, remind them that you want to pick one of two things that repeat themselves over and over again like the one you chose.

5) Practice variations of this over the next few days in my next math post I am going to add an extension activity for this same rhythmic pattern activity.

Consider purchase the following cubes, book (or a similar book) for the next few pattern lessons:

Write a Survey

Teaching Kindergarten was such a great learning experience.  I have so many flashbacks of memories that remind me how much children enjoy the simple things.  One simple thing my Kindergarteners loved to do was go around the room and take a survey of information; their favorite survey seemed to be likes and dislikes.

Pick something that your little one might want to find out or ask your little one what they want to ask.  Brainstorm with them….”Do you want to find out how many people like Fireworks?  Or how many people like sparklers?  Or how many people like party hats?” 

1. Click on the following like, and print out the sheet (or make one like it if you dont have a printer).  Like/Dislike Chart

2. Pick one topic and model writing it into a question at the top of the page in the space provided.

3. Place the page on a clipboard.  My kids loved this because it made them feel so professional. Here are some fun ones I found on amazon:

4. Have them go around the room and survey family members, friends, or even stuffed animals or dolls pretending that they are responding. 

5.  Allow them to record this info ANYWAY they choose: checkmarks, x’s, a Y for “yes” and an N for “No”, etc.

Do the first one with them 🙂 

This is a great way to teach organization skills because it is formatted as a chart, and it can even incorporate counting skills and more or less if afterwards you help them add up to see whether or not the majority of people liked or disliked the given topic. 

As always, have fun!

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