November 2013 Grades K-4

Dear Families,

November is the start of the holiday season, and what better time of year to practice how to give to one another in those small but important ways. This month grades K-4 will be learning the art of ‘Bucket Filling’.

What is the "bucket"?

The bucket represents your mental and emotional self.

How do you feel when your bucket is full?

When your bucket is full, you feel more confident, secure, calm, patient, and friendly. Your thoughts are positive and you expect positive results. When your bucket is overflowing, you experience an intense happiness that can spread to those around you. Have you ever felt better after someone gave you a friendly smile or happy grin? This is the "ripple effect" of a full bucket.

How do you feel when your bucket is empty?

When your bucket is empty, it contains few, if any, positive thoughts or feelings. When your bucket is empty you can easily become sad, negative, insecure, nervous, angry, depressed, stressed, worried, afraid, or physically ill. When you experience any of these feelings, it's easy to believe that life is too challenging and that nothing you attempt will be successful. An empty bucket can affect your behavior and cause you to express your emotions in a way that empties the buckets of those around you.

Students will quickly realize that when they fill someone else’s bucket, they are also filling their own! A wonderful pay-it-forward attitude to encourage in all of us. See this link for more on this lesson: http://www.bucketfillers101.com/faqs.php

We’ll be reading the following books, one for each grade level, and talking about how we can incorporate bucket filling into our daily interactions :

Happy Filling!

Ms. Cahill

Kindergarten: "Fill a Bucket", Grade 1: "Will You Fill My Bucket?", Grade 2: "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?", Grade 3: "How Full is Your Bucket?", Grade 4: "Growing Up with a Bucket Full of Happiness".

October 2013 Grade 3

Dear Family Members,

During a recent Developmental Guidance lesson, your child’s class viewed a program called My Best Me: All About Self-Esteem. We learned that self-esteem is determined by how much we value ourselves and our abilities. The program is composed of these four vignettes:

1 . All Your Talents:  Mike is not good at basketball, and compares himself unfavorably to his more athletic brother. His brother points out Mike is a talented musician. Assessing your own strengths and weaknesses helps give you a better sense of where you can excel, and feel good about yourself.

2. Your Best: This episode introduces Lauren, who learns that although her science project didn’t win first prize, she should still be satisfied. Her mother and cousin encourage her to recognize that trying her best is what really matters.

3. Being Different is Good: Eva’s story points out the value of self-acceptance. Rather than trying to blend in with the crowd, Eva learns to feel good about her ethnic heritage and gains the approval of her peers in the process. Taking pride in your personal identity is an important way to gain good self-esteem.

4. Choose Who You Listen To: Tim’s tale illustrates why we need to rely upon the people who accept us. Tim enjoys gymnastics, but almost gives up when his friends tease him. His coach reminds Tim that he should never let other people’s negativity keep him from pursuing his goals.

Ask your child what he or she learned from watching the program. Which story did your child like best? Why? Discuss how the information learned in the program can be used at home. Talk to your child about what self-esteem means. Share your own experiences with your child. Have you ever experienced low self-esteem? What helped you regain your self-esteem? Are there things that your child wishes to improve? Work together to develop a reasonable, step-by-step action plan that will help your child use his or her strengths.

Thank you for helping us as we examine this important topic!

Sincerely,

Ms. Cahill

October 2013 Grade 4

Dear Family,

During a recent Developmental Guidance lesson, your child’s class viewed a short video called  What Does it Mean to be a Good Friend?   By elementary school, most children are ready to explore the world of friendship in more complex ways. They already know the fundamentals of how to make friends, but often lack the more sophisticated skills that are needed to be a good friend to others.

Showing empathy, communicating clearly, being able to compromise, having patience and demonstrating loyalty to friends are all traits that rank highly among the social proficiencies that children must hone during childhood. Unlike reading, math and science, friendship is not something that can be taught with a textbook. Instead, it is a skill that develops over time, through many life experiences. Ideally, most of a child’s interactions will be rewarding and positive, but there may also be hurtful or disappointing outcomes at times.

Being able to make—and keep—friends is one of the most valuable skills that children can learn. Having friends who care about them and enjoy spending time with them helps create a happy, optimistic, well-adjusted child. Having friends makes life more meaningful, more productive and, ultimately, more fun.

What Does It Mean to Be a Good Friend?  was created to help elementary school children understand how friends should behave toward one another and recognize why such behavior is important. Specific guidelines for how to behave in a friendship are described. These skills include listening when a friend speaks, being empathetic or looking at a situation through another person’s eyes, thinking before acting in anger and standing up for their friends in order to show support and loyalty.

The program encourages young people to assess their relationships and their behavior toward others. In this way, viewers are not only educated about the proper way for friends to behave, but they are also motivated to learn new, more complex friendship skills and put them into practice.

Ask your child to tell you about the stories in the program and the lessons the characters learned. Create an opening for discussion by asking if he or she has ever been in a situation like one of those dramatized. It’s important to remember that we model behavior for our children, and they watch our interactions for clues on how to treat one another.

Sincerely,

Ms. Cahill

October 2013 Grades 1 and 2

Dear Family Member,

During a recent Developmental Guidance lesson, your child viewed a program called “Think About Others: What It Means to Be Considerate.” Not surprisingly, thinking about others is something that doesn’t come easily to young children. But children in the early elementary grades are in the process of learning the social skills that help them connect to others. By exploring what it means to be polite, caring and considerate to others, this program helps the youngest children understand that putting these positive qualities into effect in their daily lives not only makes others feel good about them, but as an added bonus makes them feel good about themselves.

In the program your child learned that thinking about others means:

• being polite and saying “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me” when appropriate.

• caring about and responding to the feelings of others.

• figuring out how someone else feels by putting yourself in that person’s place.

• treating others the way you would like to be treated.

• helping someone who needs help, even without being asked.

• helping to make the world a much nicer place.

Talk with your child about what he or she has learned from the program. Create openings

for discussion by helping your child become aware of family situations in which being considerate helps everyone get along better. Two books that can help in reinforcing what your

child learned are:

Eyre, Richard, and Linda Eyre. Teaching Your Child Values. Fireside, 1993.

Post, Peggy, and Cindy Post Senning. Emily Post’s The Gift of Good Manners: A

Parent’s Guide to Raising Respectful, Kind, Considerate Children. HarperCollins

reprint, 2005.

Yours truly,

Ms. Cahill

October 2013 Kindergarten

Dear Family,

During a recent Developmental Guidance lesson, your child’s class viewed a program called We’re All Different. The early grades constitute an expanding universe for young children, whose former experiences may have previously been limited to home and family. But as they become more group-oriented and develop social skills, children begin to compare themselves to their peers, and take notice of differences. We’re All Different helps the youngest students understand that even though everyone is different in lots of ways, everyone is special because he or she is “one of a kind.” They also learn that while we are all different, we are also alike in many ways. With the help of an engaging puppet host and catchy theme song, the program makes the following points:

• Everyone is special in his or her own special way.

• Some people look different, and some can do things others can’t do, but we’re all the same in some important ways.

• Working together, different people with different talents and abilities can make things the best they can be.

• People from different places have different customs and eat different foods.

• It’s important to respect differences in people’s cultures and tastes.

• Just because people are different doesn’t mean they don’t have the same feelings as everyone else.

Talk to your child about what he/she has learned from the program. All children receive daily messages about the differences between themselves and others, and they need to identify, understand, and appreciate the similarities.

Suggested Reading: Whoever You Are by Mem Fox, The Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka, The Story of the Infinipede by Bridget Noel Welch Kamke.

Sincerely,

Ms. Cahill

September 2013 Grades 3 and 4

Dear Family,

Children learn best when they feel safe, respected, and cared for. In a continuing effort to create a safe and positive learning environment, we will continue working on basic respectful behavior. We will have regular, ongoing discussions that include the following:

• Friendship skills -  including how to make friends, join group activities and manage conflicts.
• Emotional skills - such as understanding the feelings of others (empathy), and managing emotions.
• How to use positive values (responsibility, respect, caring for others) as a guide for behavior.
• Assertiveness – how to speak up in a clear, respectful manner to communicate effectively.

Each class will receive the same lesson at some time during the month, depending on the schedule, and students will bring home a letter detailing the topic we discussed.

This first lesson focused on a simple message – Friendship Begins with Respect,  which began with students listening to the book, How to Lose All Your Friends, a satirical look at what NOT to do to! The class then defined a friend as someone you like and who likes you, and as someone who helps you out and cares about you. The goal is to get all children thinking about creating and choosing healthy relationships.

As always, I encourage you to continue these conversations with your child at home.

Yours truly,

Ms. Cahill

September 2013 Grade 2

Dear Family Member,

During a recent Developmental Guidance lesson, your child viewed a short program called Can I Have a Turn? Learning About Sharing. The program’s goal is to demonstrate different ways to share and how sharing helps people get along better with others. It also helps children become aware that when it comes to sharing, not all situations need be the same.

The program shows children:

• problems can arise when one child monopolizes something that other children might want to play with.

• some of the ways they can share are by dividing things up, playing together instead of alone, and taking turns.

• choosing not to share is okay, but just taking something if someone decides not to share it is not okay.

• it may seem unfair, but someone’s decision not to share something that belongs to them needs to be respected.

• if they don’t want to share something, they should save it to play with by themselves and find other things to share.

Talk with your child about what he or she has learned about sharing by creating openings for conversation on this topic.

Reading books together can reinforce your child’s understanding of the benefits that can come from sharing and provide a springboard for discussion.

Books you might read with your child on this topic: Barbara Shook Hazen. That Toad is Mine! HarperFestival, 1998. A humorous and satisfying look at friendship and sharing.

Mary Ann Hoberman. One of Each. Megan Tingley, 1997. A gentle message about the importance of sharing.

Kevin Luthardt. Mine! Atheneum, 2001. An ideal first picture book about sharing.

Yours truly,

Ms. Cahill

September 2013 Kindergarten and Grade 1

Dear Families,

Welcome to a new school year! This is the time of year when we're all adjusting to the structure of being in school, and learning our classroom and school rules. I feel it's important to explain the 'why' of rules here at school, so that children have an understanding that there are very good reasons rules are in place.

For our first  Developmental Guidance lesson of the school year in Kindergarten and 1st grade, your child viewed a short program called I Can Follow Rules by Sunburst  Visual Media. This topic is one that is import to all age groups because rules are a part of our everyday lives. It is especially important to discuss this topic with your child, because failure to follow the rules can often create unfair, unkind, or unsafe situations. Here are some questions you can ask your child to help open a discussion:

• What are some of the rules that you have to follow in school?
• Are there any rules that you don’t understand? What are they?
• Is it hard for you to follow any of the rules? Which ones, and why?

Here are some tips about following rules that you can reinforce through discussion of this topic with your child:

• Rules are important because they help to keep things fair for everyone, they help keep us safe, and they remind us to treat each other with respect.
• People who break the rules may cause harm to others as well as to themselves.

Reinforce with your child the techniques that were suggested in the program to make it easier to follow rules:

• Talk to yourself about why you should follow the rule.
• Use self-control and wait your turn.
• Pay attention so you can follow directions.

Let your child know that you are always available to talk about any problems he or she may have with a particular rule – why it is important, whether or not it is fair, how best to follow it.

Books you might read with your child: Doug Rules by Nancy E. Krulik, Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss.

 

Yours truly,

 Ms. Cahill