Guidance

I have begun weekly guidance lessons in both kindergarten classrooms.  Our current topic is building a broad "feelings" vocabulary.  We will be reading lots of books about feelings, singing sign language songs about managing feelings and creating our own "Feelings" book.   If you would like to purchase a music CD of these delightful songs, you can do so the the website www.cfchildren.org.  When we have finished this unit, we will have a showcase at a Friday morning meeting - date to be announced later.

Why talk about feelings?  The first step in teaching effective social problem solving skills is to build empathy.  Children learn about empathy by first being aware of and understanding their own emotions. Once they can do that, they can transition to understanding others' emotions. Parents can help their children build these skills by naming and identifying feelings  - yours, theirs, book characters, etc.

When we finish with the feelings unit, we will move on to friendship.   "We want everyone to have friends." is a goal students will be working toward. Students will be learning the steps we can take to make this happen. (We will ask people to play with us; We will play with other people; We will look and make sure no one is left out; When someone doesn't want to play, we can ask them again another day; We can smile and say hello to people) as well as reading lots of books on friendship and talking about what we can learn from how the characters act.