Last Hurrah!

While last week was a bit hit or miss with groups due to Wolf Ridge, class plays, and field trips, this week groups are a "sure thing" as we will be celebrating our last week of being together.  How fast did that go?!?

To honor the occasion we're doing our third annual "camp-in", complete with tent, campfire stories, and s'mores, all from the comfort of the Learning Center!  The kids get such a kick out of the novelty of "camping" and it's a great way to reflect on what we did and learned throughout the school year while we transition into thinking about summer.  I look forward to this week all year long!

 On a personal note, this has also been a great opportunity for me to put some closure not just to the school year, but also to my time in the Westonka district.  I won't be returning for the 2011-2012 school year as I have decided to pursue other opportunities that combine my love for travel with my passion for working with kids and families.  I'm a firm believer in taking risks and living life without regrets, so fingers crossed I've made the right decision!

I will be teaching Summer Enrichment in Mound through Westonka Community Education until September, as well as helping out with Adventure Club.  Hopefully I have an opportunity to work a little longer with your children, or at least say good-bye, before heading off.  Thank you for all of your support over the last three years! 

Here's to a great summer and a bright future!
Shannon

More Social Communication!

This week we are continuing with our social communication unit.  While last week we focused on what wasn’t spoken, but still communicated, this week we’re working on what is being said, but with words that have multiple meanings: idioms.

For students who are more “literal” it isn’t easy to understand slang expressions or words with multiple meanings.  Younger children especially have a hard time with this concept as they are still building their language skills.  Books like “Amelia Bedelia” do a great job of demonstrating these miscommunications.  When students aren’t able to understand what someone is saying, they miss out on the conversation or direction or might stand out among their peers socially.  By building better understanding of some of these common misunderstandings, we’re preparing students for successful social interactions.

Here’s a list of a few of the words and sayings we’ll be learning about:

Ball, hot, fly, chill, cool, feet, pop….

Pick up your room, get up and go, lose it, through the roof, couch potato….

There are lots of online resources, games, and tools for working on idioms.  We’ll be using a game on the website www.funbrain.com to build these skills.  As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.  Have a great week!

Social Communication

It’s another wild and unpredictable week at Hilltop, so going with the flow most groups this week were able to move on to our social communication unit.  This week we focused on non-verbal communication---eye contact, facial expressions, body language, “looks” we get from other people.  For some students these are really difficult to "get" because it requires paying close attention to other people and being able to accurately guess what other people are thinking or feeling.

Several groups got to do a “No Talking Day” which consisted of using simple sign language to “check in” for the day and share how they were feeling, participating in a team-building tower-building activity, and finally choosing a prize to take home using more sign language (colors, please, thank you).  Not only were students forced to use a different way of communicating instead of speaking, they had to be especially attentive to the group and one another so they didn’t miss what was going on in group, which is also a very difficult task for some students.

Based on group needs there were a couple groups that played the “Understanding Faces” game (imagine Apples to Apples, but with faces instead of words), and yet a couple others finished up some activities that they had started the week before, waiting to start a more formal communication lesson until next week.

Looking forward, the school year is coming to an end in a month and so I’ve been preparing students for our last few meetings.  Next week we’ll do another lesson on social communication (literal and figurative language).  The week after I’ll be at Wolf Ridge with Shirley Hills so there will be no groups.  The last week of May we’ll do a lesson on transitions and the final full week of school we’ll have our end-of-the-year celebrations (yes, this probably means the tent will be back for an in-office camp out!).  Time will fly, that’s for sure.  As always, let me know if you have any questions and I’m more than happy to help!

More Stone Soup

How did this week get away from me so quickly?  Just when I thought things would be back to normal this week with MCAs finished up, NWEA tests and a day-long Earth Day celebration threw a monkey wrench into the schedule.  I suppose this is what we can expect for the last six weeks of school with field trips and end-of-year activities.  I’ll really have to practice what I preach about being flexible!

This week our groups were again a bit of “stone soup” as we played catch-up and worked around changing schedules.  Here’s a quick rundown of what we did this week:

Gr. 3 Boys---Talking, Feeling and Doing Game

Gr. 4 Boys---Team Building Activity

K Boys---Team Building Activity

Gr. 2 Boys---Talking, Feeling and Doing Game

Gr. 1 Girls---Hygiene, Friendship Island Game

Gr. 2 Girls---Friendship Island Game

Next week and the week after should be back to “normal” and we’ll begin our unit on communication/social thinking.  Next week, in fact, is one of my favorite lessons: nonverbal communication.  I can’t wait to share with you the plans when I blog on Monday!  Have a great weekend!

Handling Angry Feelings and Other Random Subjects

Due to the wildness and wooliness of our school’s schedule this month with testing, this week and next week will be “catch-up” weeks for our groups.  Some students have been able to meet regularly, but I haven’t seen some smiling faces for a few weeks now!  Here is the plan for groups this week:

Gr. 2 Boys---5 Point Scale Review

Gr. 1 Boys---Bounce Back (anger management game---very fun!)

K Boys---Bounce Back

Gr. 1 Girls---Self Care and Hygiene

Gr. 2 Girls---The Talking, Feeling, and Doing Game

Our third and fourth grade groups have all been put on hold due to testing.  Like many of our students, I can’t wait to get back to a normal schedule next week!  Enjoy the snow today (hopefully the last snow of the season?)!

Handling Angry Feelings, Part Two

As I look at my schedule for the next two weeks, I’m feeling bad because it will really be hit or miss with groups as we complete our MCA testing.  So as I write, bear in mind that the lessons I have planned for the next two weeks may or may not happen for your child, depending on how schedules have been affected. 

Now that I’ve gotten my disclaimer out of the way….

We’re continuing on through our unit of handling angry feelings.   Last week we read a story, made a 5 Point Scale of angry feelings, and did a worksheet to reinforce the different “levels” of being mad.  This week we will talk about healthy ways of handling angry feelings.  We all know that bottling feelings up isn’t healthy, but neither is venting (talking about the angry feelings again and again only makes us hold on to the anger longer and continually re-live what made us angry to begin with).  Obviously being violent with our words or actions aren’t good ideas, either.

I would like to encourage students to use some of the same strategies that help them when they’re feeling anxious---take a deep breath, think of something calming, talk to a trusted adult to come up with ways to take back control of a situation (usually that causes us anger), use exercise to release mad feelings, or write or draw out emotions.  It’s very human of us to “lose our cool” when we’re angry, making poor choices and feeling regretful afterward.  The more we can become familiar with what makes us angry and what helps us dissolve that anger, the better off we are.

Have a great week!

Handling Angry Feelings

For the past couple weeks we have been building our perspective-taking skills.  Last week was an especially fun time as students had the opportunity to share what they liked about their friends in group.  I was amazed that kindergarten through fourth grade students alike embraced the idea of making their groupmates feel good by writing kind things to them.  And, of course, it was fun to be able to bring an envelope full of positive thoughts about themselves home, too!  We will continue to build on this concept as we move into our next unit on handling angry feelings.

There's nothing that gives us "weirder" feelings about someone as when they "lose their cool" during frustrating situations.  Some people are naturally able to handle difficult feelings with grace and control, but the rest of us very human human beings have to develop the ability to appropriately manage when we are feeling upset or angry.  The earlier we can learn these skills, the better off down the road we will be, the better other people will feel about being around us.  We will start this month-long unit this week by building a 5 Point Scale of angry feelings.  Students should be familiar with this scale as it is something we learned about last fall, but we will adapt it to reflect the different levels of mad there are (from irritated to irate).  We will identify what our bodies and thoughts are like at each level.  We'll reinforce what we learn with real-life anecdotes as well as fun worksheets.  Next week we'll work on different techniques to handle angry feelings (like we did with anxious feelings).

One quick heads-up as we roll into MCA testing next week:  Schedules are crazy!  Even though it is just our third and fourth grade students testing, many grade levels' schedules are impacted due to lunches, specials, and staff being shuffled around in order to accommodate the demands of the MCAs.  I will do my best to make sure I see all of my groups each week, but I fully expect that things will be a little wild and woolly starting next Monday!  If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me. 

Have a great week!

A Little More Perspective (Taking)

How do you like this?  It's Monday and I'm writing the blog!  Wahoo!

We will be continuing our unit on perspective taking this week by embracing a couple of social thinking concepts from the social thinking "guru" Michelle Garcia Winner.  The first concept will be "All About Me versus Thinking About Others" and the second will be "Good and Weird Thoughts".  The first concept takes what we learned last week about understanding a situation from another perspective and makes it more personal---how does my behavior reflect if I'm thinking about myself or if I'm thinking about others?  And from there moving into "does my behavior give other people good thoughts about me or weird ones?".  I know "weird" is kind of a hot-button word, but we never use it to describe a person, just that awkward, uncomfortable feeling we sometimes get if things feel funny.

To practice these concepts, we'll role play and talk about different scenarios that happen on a regular basis and decide as a group whether the situation reflects a person thinking about themselves first or others.  From there we'll do a sort of "affirmation circle" in which students will write down or draw something that each person in group does that gives them a good thought (i.e. being a good listener, laughing at jokes, taking turns, etc.).  The emphasis will be on improving on behaviors that make people want to be friends with us.

As I write this, it sounds like a tall order to fill, but the kids are awesome so I think this will be a fun learning week.  Enjoy the sunshine and keep your fingers crossed that warm weather comes our way soon!

Perspective Taking

Well this week has certainly zipped by quickly!  Aren't snow days great?  It wouldn't be a Minnesota winter without them, even if we do have to wait until the end of March for them to come....  And I'm vowing now to get back on track and post these updates on Mondays again, but in the mean time, better late than never!

This week in group we worked on the difficult skill of perspective taking.  This skill is part of the mindfulness curriculum, as well as our social thinking curriculum, and it harnesses the pre-frontal cortex's ability to process through new information by comparing it to existing knowledge, then make good decisions.  Yes, even as adults we're constantly working on this skill!  However, the ability to view a situation from another person's point of view improves interpersonal relationships, quells anxiety, helps with impulse control, and gives us the opportunity to predict how to respond in different situations.  In general, perspective taking builds the brain's ability to make more reflective, conscious, appropriate responses.

We read a great story called "Hey, Little Ant" by Phillip and Hannah Hoose and then did a drawing activity to reinforce different perspectives.  Next week we will continue with our unit on perspective taking and move from "how do other people feel in this situation?" to "how do other people feel about me in this situation?".  Have a great weekend!

Mindfulness Wrap-Up

Where has the time gone?!?  I apologize for the lack of update last week; I was sent home sick with the flu by our school nurse last Tuesday and it all went downhill from there….  This winter has been brutal, hasn’t it?  We’re ready for spring!

I am definitely glad to be back to a regular schedule this week with groups back to normal before we head into spring break.  We are finishing up our Mindfulness unit this week with a review of all we’ve learned about the brain, its functions, and how we can bring mindfulness into our everyday lives---listening, seeing, smelling, tasting, and moving.  My hope is that students feel empowered by learning more about how their brain and body work together.  By becoming more mindful students are better able to learn at school, build relationships with peers, and be met with more success each day at home and school.

Because students have worked so hard on this unit and there’s no better way to celebrate a job well done, we’re having a “game day” this week in group.  Energy levels are running high with the anticipation of our upcoming break, so letting each group choose a game and let loose has been a great practice in building social skills in a very “organic” setting.  It is always fun and interesting to watch!  When we return from break we’ll be transitioning into our unit on perspective taking---building those “social thinking” skills. 

It was great to see so many parents at conferences last Thursday and Friday!  I am continually grateful to have a job where I get to know such amazing parents and children.  (And it was also fun to hear that my mom isn’t the only one who is reading this blog!)  Enjoy your spring break!

Mindful Movement---Part I

A short week of school this week!  Those students that usually see me on Tuesdays will get to play catch-up next week as we bring our focus to Mindful Movement.  Last week’s mindful tasting was definitely a hit.  Students were so thoughtful as they carefully examined and tasted each small piece of food.  You would have been astonished to see your child eat so slowly and thoughtfully, I promise!  What a great focusing activity!

This week and next week we will be changing our focus to our bodies and movement.  Because we’ve learned about stress and anxiety, as well as the fight/flight/freeze response of our amygdala, we’ll be discussing the effect cortisol has on our bodies.  When we’re under stress, our brains release cortisol to help us stay alert and help us manage stress.  However, if we don’t teach our bodies how to properly relax, on-going stress and the release of cortisol can wreak havoc on our health.  In group this week we’ll practice revving our bodies up and calming them down, taking control of the release of cortisol.  We’ll use our pulses as a way of measuring the stress on our bodies.

At home, try having your child take his/her pulse doing different activities (waking up in the morning, going to bed, doing the dishes, doing homework, playing with a sibling, etc.).  The greater the ability to understand what our bodies are telling us, the happier and healthier we become and the better we’re able to connect to others!  As always, let me know if you have any questions----

Mindful Tasting

It’s the week we’ve all been wating for….  Mindful tasting is here!  I have several students this year who participated in my after-school Mindfulness group last year that have been begging since we started focusing on mindfulness last month to do the mindful tasting class.  It’s finally here and we’re having a great time!  I’ve never seen any child eat one small piece of food so slowly in my entire life and I love it!

How many times have we shoveled food into our mouths without putting thought into what or how much we’re eating, or even if we like what’s going in?  I think I’m guilty of this on a daily basis!  By slowing our bodies and brains down and mindfully tasting and eating what we’re putting into our mouths (in addition to creating healthier eating habits) we’re training our brains to really see, feel, and smell what we’re eating in addition to just tasting.  Talk about making the neurons connect and letting the dopamine flow! 

This week we tried eating several different foods by first familiarizing ourselves with the foods’ color, size, texture, shape, and smell.  Then we put it in our mouths, but before we chewed, we drew attention to what it felt like in our mouths, what part of our tongue could taste the flavor.  Finally we slowly chewed and swallowed, enjoying one small piece of food.  You could have heard a pin drop during our experiments!  What fun!

Encourage your child to slow down and enjoy their food this week.  Try new foods at home and do some taste testing of your own.  Bon Appetit!

Mindful Smelling

From mindful seeing to mindful smelling….  This week in group we will be working on honing our sense of smell.  Just like with what we see, what we smell is also filtered through our reticular activating system.   Our sense of smell is special because it triggers memories, thoughts, and feelings more quickly than any other sense.  (I can’t smell diesel exhaust without thinking of riding the bus to school as a kid!)

This week in group we will be doing a “Mystery Scent” activity in which students will smell a mystery scent and have to identify how it makes them feel or what it makes them think of.  I am hopeful that by this point in the school year students feel safe and happy enough in group to share freely.  Children who feel comfortable take more risks and those risks encourage creativity and increased conceptual thinking.  This, in turn, helps kids to be more tolerant, sensitive, and collaborative. 

Training the brain is hard, but fun, work!  Be creative with your families as you think of your own activities to encourage mindful hearing, seeing, and smelling!

Mindful Seeing

From mindful listening to mindful seeing…..   We had a great time playing our mystery sound game last week.  It was fun to watch the kids focus SO hard on what the sound was and wrack their brains trying to think of where they’d heard that noise before.  Some sounds were a lot easier (typing on a keyboard) than others (shuffling a deck of cards)!

This week we transition to mindful seeing---that concept of being observant of everything around you.  The lower part of the posterior of our brains have something called the Reticular Activating System----an unconscious filter that decides which sensory input is attended to or ignored.  Each moment of our waking days are inundated with sights, sounds, smells, textures, etc., but we can only absorb a little bit of it at once.  By focusing on mindfully seeing what is around us, we are training our brains to focus on what we want it to, not getting caught up in everything else.

We will be doing a mindful seeing activity with marbles and following it up with a little bit of poetry writing to process what they’re seeing, so it should be an interesting week!  Hopefully your child shares with you ways that you can use mindful seeing in your everyday life!

Mindful Listening

We had a great time last week working on our mindful breathing.  A couple of the favorite “tools” that we used were the Hoberman Sphere (you can check them out at www.hoberman.com) and the Bubble Bear (a fun way to blow bubbles---you can find them at Creative Kidstuff for $6).  Both encourage slow and mindful breathing, a great way to simultaneously slow down the body and brain, allowing for increased focus for the task at hand.  And they’re fun, too!

This week we will take what we learned about using mindful breathing to help us transition to more in depth mindful listening.  Last week we talked about a chemical our brain releases called acetylcholine, which calms our amygdala.  This week we will talk about another chemical that our brain releases called dopamine.  Dopamine is released in the pre frontal cortex when having fun or doing activities that make us feel happy.  When dopamine is released, it helps us focus, remember, and solve problems better.  This is why I like to have so much fun in group!

To practice mindful listening we will have a “mystery sound” challenge, as well as an old fashioned game of “telephone.”  Both activities require students to focus their brains like lasers to discover what they’re hearing.  Try activities like these at home with your families for a change of pace and an opportunity to mindfully listen. 

Next week we will begin working on mindfully seeing.  Let me know if you have any questions!

Mindful Listening and Breathing

We had a great time last week learning about the difference between mindfulness and mindlessness.  It was fun to see the kids get engaged as soon as they made the connection that mindfulness is applicable to their hobbies and interests, not just at school.  They realized that being mindful helps them pass more levels when playing video games, stay in step at dance classes, and win more face-offs at hockey games.  Who knew mindfulness could be so useful?!?

This week we will learn two techniques that are helpful when reminding ourselves to be mindful---mindful listening and mindful breathing.  Calling attention to our breath in the midst of stress and chaos allows a chemical to be released from the pre-frontal cortex of the brain called acetylcholine.  Acetylcholine travels to the amygdala and helps calm it’s flight/fight/freeze reaction, allowing us to calm down and focus.  And that’s why everyone tells you to take deep breaths when you’re feeling scared or anxious!

We will be practicing deep breathing with the “belly breathing” we learned last fall when we talked about anxiety, as well as “volcano breathing” which we practiced when we did yoga.  We will also be using some props---pinwheels, bubbles, and hoberman spheres---to reinforce the idea of breathing in and out slowly.  It’s the difference between blowing out birthday candles and blowing up balloons.  I have to give props to Ann Kilgore, our district’s occupational therapist, as she was a great resource as I planned this lesson.

Next week we will begin bringing awareness to mindfulness and our senses.  More fun!  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.  Have a great week!

Friendship Group Update, Week of Jan. 10

Learning about the brain is so much fun!  I just love our mindfulness unit.  We had a great time last week learning about the pre-frontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus.  I hope your child came home excited to quiz you on your knowledge of the brain.  This week we take what we learned last week about the different functions of the brain and apply it to the concepts of “mindfulness” and “mindlessness.”  When we use our pre-frontal cortex to slow our brains down and process information, rather than just react to information, we are being mindful.

In addition to discussing mindfulness, in group this week we will also be doing a mindful listening activity and drawing pictures of our mindful selves as well as our mindless selves.  Next week we will be building on our mindful listening and breathing skills. 

As always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

Bucket Fillers!

One of my responsibilities at Hilltop is to help develop our school-wide character education curriculum.  I am excited to present to you this month's theme of Bucket Filling.  Below is a letter that will be posted on each classroom teacher's website explaining what we hope to achieve this month.  If you have any questions or suggestions on how we can build on this concept, don't hesitate to let me know.  Have an excellent weekend!

Dear Parents,

This month at Hilltop we are becoming “Bucket Fillers” as part of our character education program.  Based on the books Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud and How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath, we are embracing the concept of filling one another’s “buckets” and making sure our “buckets” stay filled by saying and doing kind things for one another.

Throughout the course of the month we will be working on meeting the following goals through this curriculum:

1. Teach children how to reach out and express love, respect and appreciation to others

2. Help children become other-centered rather than self-centered

3. Help children express their feelings (good and bad) in a healthy manner

4. Help children understand where feelings originate and how to protect their feelings from being hurt

5. Establish a framework for more constructive words and actions and less bullying

6. Create more positive home and school environments

(Taken from www.bucketfillers101.com)

Each week students will participate in creative classroom lessons that will teach and reinforce the concepts listed above.  Additionally, staff school-wide will be watching for students who are filling the buckets of others.  Those students “caught” filling buckets will receive special recognition at the end of each week. 

Be sure to ask your child about how they’ve filled someone’s bucket or how their bucket was filled each day!  It’s a fun and easy way to stay connected to what’s happening at school, as well as a great strategy to try within your own family.  We are excited about the positive impact this will have on our student body and school climate and as always, we thank you for your support!

Sincerely,

The Hilltop Staff

 

Mindfulness Begins! Friendship Group Update...

Happy New Year!  I hope this finds everyone happy and healthy as we embark on a new year and new unit in Friendship Group!  I am very excited about the month of January as this is the month that we begin my favorite unit of the year: Mindfulness. 

For those parents whose children I had in group last year, you might remember the curriculum called “MindUP” which is a product of The Hawn Foundation.  It is a social emotional learning program designed to enhance a child’s self-awareness, social awareness, focused attention, self regulation, problem solving, pro-social behaviors (helping, sharing, and cooperating), and positive human qualities, such as happiness, optimism, and altruism.  We will work our way through the most updated curriculum until spring break, refreshing on lessons learned last year, as well as going more in-depth into content of the curriculum.  Check out MindUp’s website for more information (www.thehawnfoundation.org/mindup).

This week we kicked off our mindfulness unit by learning about the brain.  It’s amazing how kindergarten through fourth grade students alike are completely enthralled by the brain!  We learned about three specific parts of the brain and their functions this week: prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus.  Each of these parts play a role as we train our brains to be mindful.  Your child will be bringing a worksheet home with the brain labeled on it, as well as notes to help them remember the function of each part.  Discuss this with your child and prepare to be amazed! 

As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!