My World of Colorful Feelings

More change happened for me yesterday . . . not a major change, unless you considering buying a new book major change.

I bought, Puzzle Pieces: Classroom Guidance Collection, a collection of character education lessons for K-5. I was looking to add some extra lessons into my 2nd grade repertoire before I began with my Connecting With Others lessons (my modified lessons from this book can be found here, here, here, and here). I figured before we start focusing on personal space, empathy, and caring, we should probably begin talking about different feelings and things that make us feel different ways. Puzzle Pieces has a great (well the verdict is still out . . . I’ve only done one lesson, which was great) unit on feelings.

Door Openers and Road Blocks

I Hear You

ADAPTED FROM: CONNECTING WITH OTHERS

Topics Covered: Interpersonal Effectiveness, Communication Skills, and Fairness

Connecting With Others Through Body Language

We teach children a lot about what to say to each other. How to say kind words, how to think before speaking, how to be nice . . . but we don’t explicitly teach them how to read each other’s body language. Someone can say a lot by not saying anything at all. And by recognizing this, I think our boys can keep themselves out of some otherwise poor situations.

I’m Listening

I think a while back I promised I would write up some awesome lessons from Connecting With Others: Lessons for Teaching Social and Emotional Competence. And somehow with everything going on, I forgot!

I began 2nd grade using Skill Area 4 of the program, Communication Skills.

Connecting With Others

I have two major things to share . . .

Blah Beaters

In Kindergarten, we have been doing a lot of talking about feelings. Feelings that make us feel good and some that make us feel, well, bad. This lesson is dedicated to a feeling us, adults, probably identify with often. Let’s play a game . . .

Oh, on that note, have I ever talked to you about my teaching philosophy? My motto/teaching philosophy came about one day when one of my Kindergarten teachers said to me, as I was picking up 5 incredibly hyped up Kindergarteners, “Whatever you do in there must be pretty fun.” And my exact response/motto/teaching philosophy was, “Any thing called a game is fun!” And off we went, momma duck and her 5 hyped up ducklings. So, am I right or am I right? Anyways back to the game I want to play with you. It’s called, “Guess what feeling I’m talking about.”

This feeling is not a happy feeling. But it’s not a sad feeling either. This feeling might make you want to watch a funny movie or just relax in bed. Any guesses?

It’s called “The Blahs.” Now, do you know what I’m talking about?

Well, anyways Kindergarteners definitely don’t have a CLUE. So, I ended up talking about many times that I’ve felt the blahs. I pretty much described it like those days that you wake up and you just don’t feel like yourself, but you don’t really know what’s wrong. For Kindergarteners, this is probably the morning that they tell their parents that they don’t want to go to school when they are normally bounding around at 6am.

I had the boys try to identify times that they may have felt this way. I explained that normally we do not like feeling “the blahs.” So . . . what do we have to do? We have to find ways to beat the blahs, appropriately named “Blah Beaters.”

Emotional Eugene beats the blahs by watching a funny movie that makes him laugh. We all pulled out our Thinking Mes and began brainstorming things we would like to do to beat the blahs.

I made a big list on the board.

• Playing outside
• Eating a cookie
• Talking to my mom
• Playing video games
• Watching T.V.
• Fishing
• Decorating the Christmas Tree
• Playing in my room
• Petting my dogs

The activity asked them to decide on the best “Blah Beater” for them and draw it on the paper. Simple, yes, that simple.

Oh, by the way, this is just another lesson adapted from the Jellybean Jamboree. How many copies of this book do you think I’ve sold? One of these days you will see a commercial of me with a Jellybean on a stick, smiling, and teaching Kindergarteners.

It Hurts

What does it mean when someone says, “That hurt my feelings?”

A lesson from Jellybean Jamboree for my Kindergarteners.