What an amazing week it has been!! Any time I get to dress up every day I'm a happy counselor, but when it is for KINDNESS, I'm elated! :)

Each day this week we not only dressed up, but we talked about how to be KIND...
kind to people who are the same,
kind to people who are different,
kind to ourselves.

We also talked about how to stand up for each other and how to be positive problem solvers. It was a fun week, but, more importantly, it was a week for educating kiddos on some very specific and important life skills!

In honor of kindness week, all my classes are talking about kindness and bully-prevention!

Kindergarten- We talked about how to be kind to other people in different places- in the cafeteria, on the playground, in the classroom, etc. We talked about kind words and felt a cotton ball to show us how soft and nice those words feel. We thought in our head about some unkind words and felt sandpaper to know how those words make people feel. We talked about how to deal with unkindness--how we can be positive problem solvers even when someone else is NOT being positive. We read Howard B Wigglebottom Learns about Bullies, but focused on unkindness in general rather than just bullying (being unkind over and over, on purpose, with an imbalance in power).

First Grade- We reviewed our diversity lesson from last time and reminded ourselves how WONDERFUL it is that we are all different!! We talked about respecting those differences. Then we talked about ways to be kind to other people and shared our ideas with others kids in our class. We read King of the Playground and talked about how to deal with unkindness--how we can be positive problem solvers even when someone else is NOT being positive. Most of my classes had time to practice working together with a classmate to make a picture depicting kindness on the playground.

Second Grade- We talked about how to be kind to other people and how to be positive problem solvers. We reviewed bullying (being unkind over and over, on purpose, with an imbalance in power) and read The Bully Blockers Club. Throughout the book we discussed the positive strategies the main character tried to solve her problem and when we thought she should have talked to an adult to get help. 

The holiday and the cold weather day moved half my classes around! A fourth and a fifth grade class are a week behind and will get these lessons the week of Jan 22-26.

Third Grade: Multiple Intelligences. We talked about how ALL kids are smart--just in different ways. We defined growth mindset and fixed mindset and discussed how (and why) to learn new things by taking positive learning risks, trying new things, asking questions, doing things we know we aren't good at YET, and sticking with things when they are hard. We talked about some different areas of kid smart and took a survey to discover our areas of strength. We'll look over the results of our surveys next class!

Fourth Grade: We defined growth mindset and fixed mindset and discussed how (and why) to learn new things by taking positive learning risks, trying new things, asking questions, doing things we know we aren't good at YET, and sticking with things when they are hard. We read Your Fantastic Elastic Brain. We tried an activity that was pretty difficult for most of us, but it sure did grow and stretch our brains! :)

Fifth Grade: Organization. We talked about ways to be organized and why. We focused on some areas that will be really important in middle school: lockers and work spaces. We traded tips for getting work done, remembering to take things home and return them to school, and using our agendas.

K- We are talking about life changes. We talked about different changes--small and big. We talked about how those changes might make someone feel. We read Big Ernie's New Home and discussed how he feels in the book and what he does to help him cope with the big change of moving.

1st- Diversity. We talked about how we are the same and different. Read It's Okay to be Different and used the book to talk about our similarities and differences and how we can be respectful of others' differences.

2nd- Life changes. Talked about what life changes are and listed examples. We talked about how life changes affect us and our feelings. We did a relaxation exercise to help us cope with tough feelings that we might have during a life change (or any time, really!).