The Way I Feel: Helping your little one with their emotions

 

Little kids have a hard time expressing emotions. They often get frustrated, have an outburst or act out in a physical nature. Going to school, whether it is preschool or elementary, is sometimes hard. There are lots of new faces, expectations and skills each day. So helping them put a voice to their feelings is the best way we can prepare them to handle uncomfortable situations.
We developed the perfect kit for other teachers and moms looking to teach their children about their emotions.
You can purchase the kit from our Simply Sprout Store. The kit is designed to explore students emotions and feelings. Students can learn to define what their feelings are using this kit. There is a chart for your to print and laminate, just add velcro or magnets onto the back of the feeling monsters. Have students identify their own feelings and show them on the chart. Students can use one of the three pages provided to either draw, journal or record weekly feelings and emotions. For teachers there is also a bulletin board kit to display student work around the classroom.

The Way I Feel Kit Contains: 

The Way I feel Feelings Chart

8 Feelings cards

Daily Behavior tracker

The Way I feel Activity sheet

The Way I feel Bulletin Board Kit ( The Way We Feel Header and 8 emotion monsters with titles)

The Way I feel Journal Page

 

I Printed the kit and laminated it at my local Kinkos (I like using their small pouch laminator because the lamination film is extra durable and thick) I added small velcro dots onto the back of the monsters and to the circles on the chart. I mounted my daughters chart next to her bed. I used sticky velcro to attach a small mirror next to her chart as well as her emotions cards (which are attached together using a plastic luggage tag cord)

When I introduced her new chart we talked about each of the feelings and cards and reviewed what the emotion words meant. I showed her how she needed to look in the mirror and see her expression and then find the feeling that matched what she saw. Within a few minutes she was trying out her new skills on her baby brother...

After flipping through her cards, my daughter determined her brother was frustrated because he couldn't climb up on the bed on his own. So I asked her, "What could we do to help him with his feeling of frustration?" "Mommy I could help him up on the bed, and then he would be happy again!" She says ...Why yes Kaitlyn I think that's a great idea!

Now our little man is back to being happy and his feeling of frustration is gone!

When setting up this area in your home be sure to make it a comfortable private spot where your child can reflect and work through their emotions. Now instead of getting frustrated with my daughter when she is melting down I just send her to her bed to take a break and evaluate her emotions. With older children you can use the printables from the kit to have them write or draw about their emotions. Just copy several back to back and place in a folder or have them spiral bound at your local copy store.
 The sheet below help younger children to express their emotions through their drawing. Just right click and save the image below to print for your class or little ones at home.

Helping your children to see that they have the power within themselves to change the way they feel will give them encouragement to discover and work through their emotions. We would love to hear how you incorporate this kit into your home or classroom please write to us at simplysprout@gmail.com

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Take a Time out...in a new way

Get your free Tag here for your Glitter Jar

Print out the image below and apply it to the top or side of your glitter jar using clear packing tape.

 

Since blogging about this we have switched our glass spaghetti Jar to a plastic Applesauce jar...it was much lighter for my daughter to use and I didn't have to worry about it slipping from her hands and breaking.

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A is for Apple

This morning went fabulous, we are settling into our new school time schedule and Kaitlyn was so eager to start her first day! We started at 9:20 when she woke up with some apple oatmeal to get us ready to start learning. I know everyone has been at school for at least an hour or two by then, but at my school we value our morning sleepy time. It's awesome I'm actually on time :)
We jumped right in to our activities today, It felt like I was right back in my classroom...just with a much smaller audience!
Working with Kaitlyn reminds me of all the things I love about teaching. The creativity, the hands on activities the light bulb moments when they finally get what you have been repeating 700 times.
Two things I took away from today.....
 I miss the actual purity of teaching.  When you taught what your students needed to know, in a way they could understand because they needed it, not just because it was what came next in your teacher manual. In today's classrooms the purity of teaching is hard to find. It's been buried and hidden amongst the endless to do's, the "essential" data driven programs and the suffocating paperwork. But if you look hard teachers still have that glimmer deep inside that still exists. I just wish as a society we could have enough faith in them to allow them to do what they were born to do....teach.

Today's projects also reminded me of one more thing, the definite separation of primary vs intermediate teachers, I can definitely testify having been both . The separation and difference can be summed up in two words paint and glitter. Primary teachers love getting their hands messy and don't mind a little glitter on the floor, Intermediate teachers on the other hand start twitching when they see projects that list paint and glitter as their two main supplies. You can tell by the following activities, and run on sentences that I am DEFINITELY a Primary teacher!
So roll up your sleeves and get a little messy with your little ones....

Here was our First Day!

While Kaitlyn ate her breakfast she went through her alphabet and color books (I found these in teh dollar section at my local Target) using a pointer. I would ask her to point to objects, colors, letters etc. Great warm up activity to get her started. We talked about the letter A and I pointed it out in her books.

After breakfast was over Kaitlyn started her first activity. We made a sticker book with her name on it. I used some left over scrapbook paper cut to 5X7 had hr choose 4 pieces and then hole punched the sides attaching ribbon through each hole to make it like a book. I had her hunt for the letters on her sticker sheet (another Target find) to make her name on the front. I will use this sticker book as positive behavior reinforcement throughout our lessons. Each time she tries really hard or completes as task correctly or other desired behavior I will let her pick a sticker to put in her sticker book. As the holidays come closer we will make new sticker books and I will get different stickers for her to choose from. I have found in the classroom that this is a great motivational tool for young ones :)

When we started learning about the letter A we talked about the sound it made, I had Kaitlyn first use her finger to trace the letter on her blackboard (Walmart) and then use her special red crayon to trace the letter. Since she is a lefty I am trying to let her figure out how she is comfortable writing without too much influence from me. So the tracing really works for her as she is learning the basics of printing.

We read the Book Apples, Apples, Apples. We talked about different types of apples and the four seasons.

After we finished reading our apple book we worked on our 4 seasons project. 

First (Step 1) I put some blue paint on a piece of white construction paper. Kaitlyn used her hands to spread it around the whole paper. (Step 2) After it dried I painted her hand and forearm brown. I placed it onto the blue paper 4 times making 4 trees. (Step 3)For the first tree we added cotton balls for snow (Winter), for the second tree she used her fingerprints in green paint to make spring leaves. we added small balls of pink tissue paper for apple blossoms (Spring) For the third tree she used two colors of green for the summer leaves and the used red thumbprints for the apples. (Summer) For the last tree she used red, orange and yellow paint to add the fall leaves using her fingerprints  (Fall) When she was all done we reviewed the seasons and I wrote them on her paper.

For our cooking activity today we made Apple Croissants....they were fabulous! Kaitlyn and I cut open the apples and looked inside counting the seeds we found and naming the parts of the apple. I sliced them very thin and added them to some butter (2 TBS) and a few sprinkles of cinnamon sugar and pumpkin pie spices in a sauce pan on the stove. I heated them until they were soft. I unrolled the Pillsbury croissants onto a baking sheet added a few of the apples and then rolled them up...Baked till golden and bubbly about 15 min. when we took them out Kaitlyn drizzled some caramel on them....they were oh so yummy!

I hope everyone had a great first day back at school wherever your classroom might be, and I hope that you find these little lessons that we are learning to be helpful.

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Our Pom Pom Jar....What behavior reward systems work at your house?

As school is starting on Monday, and the kids are getting back into their school year routines it is often hard to come up with the patience to deal with poor behavior. Here's a quick tip for how we keep the peace while raising a sassy little 3 year old and a giggly little 5 month old. We have a Pom Pom Jar that sits on the kitchen counter (a fancy name for a plain old spaghetti sauce jar) Kaitlyn earns pom poms for doing various things, whether its good behavior or a reward for finishing her chores. She also can have them taken away for unfavorable behavior or not completing her chores. Each line on the spaghetti jar is a reward that she can earn. Last month we went to Orlando and Kaitlyn wanted some figurines from the movie Tangled. It came with 8 different figurines. So they sat on the top of the refrigerator and each time she reached one of the lines on the jar she earned one of the figurines. The jar is not only for earning tangible items, some times she earns priviledges as well. Once we fill up the jar Kaitlyn decides what she wants to earn  next, this month she is working toward a date night with mommy and daddy to go see a movie. We have found that this is a rewarding system for her and it helps her to be responsible for her own actions around the house. With kids it's important to show tangible consequences when an undesirable behavior is displayed, having her take the pom pom out of the jar is reinforcing which behaviors are acceptable and earn her pom poms and which are not. This has been a great system that we use in our home, What do you find works in your household for your little ones?

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