A Healthy Amount of Curiosity Never Killed The Cat

Our 4th new character skill was curiosity. This one was especially hard to teach because so many students were taught that curiosity would get them into trouble. I had to reframe their thinking into remembering that curiosity leads us to learn new things. All learning starts when we are first curious about something. 

Everything is Awesome

Back in December, I switched my character skills to some that might have more learning potential than our original 6 traits that we practiced in the past. You may remember my post about this. We began with Grit, moved into Optimism, and then on to Zest.

Promoting Your Program Through Monthly Newsletters

I apologize for the throughly lame title to this post . . . but I honestly couldn’t think of a cute, witty title  . . . Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, I promise this will be worth the read!

Last year, I started writing up monthly newsletters for the parents. I wanted to promote my program, so they knew what their child was learning during “Character Education.” During my first year of counseling (as the first counselor at the school), I kept battling parents who were truly angry when they heard their child came to see me or that I went into the classroom to teach a lesson. They figured if their child saw the counselor then there was one of two problems:

1. Their child was spilling all the family secrets

and/or

2. Something was wrong with their child and he would come talk to me

and inadvertently, even though he was only 4, he would spill all the family secrets.

Choosing Friends

I did a more advanced lesson about this in 4th grade a couple years back. The lesson had them think more globally, than my current 1st grade lesson. It wasn’t at all my favorite lesson I’ve ever done and in fact, I don’t think I even wrote about it. But this lesson on the other hand . . . MUCH better . . . maybe just more age-appropriate, but who knows.

I picked this lesson from Puzzle Pieces because I thought it was a good explanation about our responsibility to appreciate others, especially those who are different than us (and as my boys know . . . our differences are what make us special). We know what is special about ourselves. So how do we find what’s special inside each of our classmates?

Mix it up, Fix up!

It’s that time of year again! What time of year you ask? The time of year when the boys start jumping all over each other’s nerves. It’s that time between parent/teacher conferences and Thanksgiving break when the boys are so comfortable with each other that they begin wondering how far they can push each other before someone loses it.

It’s Mine!

Each year, as part of my Friendly Francine Unit (from Jellybean Jamboree) I do with Kindergarteners, we talk about sharing. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to reiterate the point in 1st grade. I thought it was especially important this time around not to emphasize sharing, but more . . . what we shouldn’t be sharing. With multiple food allergies throughout the school, I thought it was important to stress the idea of not being able to share food or medicine.

Friendship Bandaids, The Right Way

I adapted my next lesson for 1st grade from my new Puzzle Pieces book. The original lesson, as it is written, was just a bit too “young” for our first graders. It had the perfect message, but I had to work to extend the ideas just a bit. Plus, I fully believe in teaching children that there is more to fixing a problem then just saying sorry.

What Kind of Friend Are You?

Another modified lesson from Puzzle Pieces that I combined with my Bucket Filling Book.

Fresh Start

I started my 3rd year as school counselor with a fresh new room (well really I just rearranged the furniture) and fresh new lessons.

I am extremely blessed to have such a large room to be working in, but at times (during these past two years) it turned into a race track. With no division of work space and play space, my computer area turned into a tennis court, with balls bouncing on the back walls.

I thought this year I would rearrange so that each different section of my room had a purpose.

Believe in Magic

During my first year of student teaching way back in 2005, my amazing mentor teacher gave me the book The Magic Hat by Mem Fox. Her instructions were simple . . . you need to read this book to our first grade class and do a writing activity afterwards. Being the new teacher I was, I was SUPER excited to get an activity together.