April 2016 - Kindergarten: Good Choices!

Kindergarten classes are viewing a program called I Can't Decide: Making Decisions for our April Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lesson. The need to make choices begins very early in life. Often these choices are seemingly simple, like whether to talk during instructional time, or keep hands off others. Young children DO struggle with these decisions each and every day! 

Making good decisions is a skill that can be learned even by the youngest students. The goal of this lesson is to show children what is involved in choosing one course of action over another, so that when they have a decision to make,  they can choose wisely. These are the early stages of establishing an internal moral compass, accepting responsibility and developing self-control.

 Here are some of the points about making decisions your child learned in the program:

✔ making a decision means choosing between different things.

✔ all choices have consequences, something that happens because of a choice you make.

✔ thinking about all the possible consequences of a choice can make it a lot easier to decide what to do.

✔ some choices are easy to make because the consequences are not important; it doesn't make any difference what you choose.

✔ when making an important choice, it takes more than thinking about the consequences to arrive at a good decision.

✔ to make a good decision, you have to know something about each  choice before you can decide.

✔ if you can't get all the information you need for a decision by yourself, you can get help.

✔ when you have a big decision to make, you will know whether it's the right or wrong decision by thinking about how you would feel if someone found out what you did.

You may use one or more of these points to open a conversation with your child. Emphasize to him/her, as the program does, that making a good decision makes you proud of yourself.

Two books you may find helpful to read with your child are: Dr. Seuss. Hunches in Bunches. Random House, 1982. Humphrey, Sandra McLeod. If You Had to Choose, What Would You Do? Prometheus Books, 1995.