Each week I meet with each class K-5. In the past, these classes have been called “Guidance.” I am starting to transition away from this term and moving towards calling the classes something else. For now, I’ll refer to them as Class Councils. Your child will likely still hear it as Guidance. I’m working on a post to explain the reasoning for this switch so stay tuned.
This page will be used to let you know what your child is working on during out time together. My hope is to give a brief explanation of the weekly lesson and provide any resources that might be useful to reinforce the topics at home. As always, let me know if you have any questions!
Week of September 5th: To start off the year we are working on kindness and being a good friend. We started off with the book, One by Kathryn Otoshi. This is such a beautiful and rich book that looks at the ways one person can make a difference. Ask your child about the book or check it out from the library and read it together! After we read and discussed the book, we talked about ways that each of us could be the one to make a difference. Sometimes that difference is to an individual, group or community. The kids all decorated and wrote their ideas down on a number 1. We are going to be taking those individual numbers and putting them all together to see how together we are even better!
Week of September 12th: We are continuing our theme of kindness and being a good friend. As such, we used the book How Full is Your Bucket, by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer. The premise of this book is that we all have an invisible bucket that is either filled up or depleted depending on our interactions throughout the day. Did someone say something nice to you? Then a drop goes in your bucket. Was someone negative towards you? If so, a drop will go out. We read this book together last year. I told the kids that I wanted to revisit as it is always good to remember how our actions impact others. We also noted that when we do something nice for someone else, we help to fill our own buckets. Together we brainstormed ways we could help fill buckets.
If you want to reinforce this lesson at home, you can spend time talking about ways to fill buckets. Perhaps when you are noticing a word or action that would dip into someone else’s buckets you could talk about the impact that might have. The kids are all used to this concept and would enjoy telling you more!
Week of September 19th: Today we began what will be a long series of lessons based on the book The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey. Each week the kids will be learning and setting goals around a habit. The first habit the students learned about was Habit 1: Be Proactive.
In the story we read, Sammy Squirrel is complaining about being bored. He goes to all of his friends asking for fun things to do. Finally, someone points out that he is in charge of his own fun. As a class we reviewed what it means to be proactive. Maybe it means putting out stuff for school the night before. Perhaps it means getting homework done before you get too tired. The kids learned that to practice Habit 1 they needed to remember the following: That they should take initiative, be responsible, do the right thing even when no one is looking, know that they choose their own actions, attitudes and moods and that they shouldn’t blame others for their wrong actions.
Next the kids set a goal for how to be more proactive. Ask them what their goal is!
Weeks of September 26 and October 3rd:
We are continuing our work with the 7 Habits for Happy Kids. On the week of the 26 we learned habit 2 which is: Have an End in Mind. This habit is all about making plans with an end goal in mind. We read the story associated with this goal and discussed why making plans is really good practice. The kids then explored how they can do that in their own lives.
This week we explored Habit 3. This habit is: Put First Things First. Work First and then Play. This is such a great habit and can be hard for ALL of us to learn. We talked about the word procrastination and ways to avoid falling into that trap. See if you as a family can identify times that you can work on putting first things first.
MDES Counseling Corner 