Social Emotional
Social emotional skills are the biggest focus for us at Windsor PreK. Research shows that social emotions skills are critical for success in kindergarten and beyond. While these skills are woven into our work across content areas, here are few of the things we work on. While there aren't necessarily "lessons" for these skills, there are some specific strategies we use to help the children develop these skills.
Breathing
When your child is having "big feelings" help them remember to breathe. There are lots of breathing strategies but some your child will be familiar with are
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Belly Breathing
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Balloon Breaths
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STAR breathing
Growth Mindset
Growth mindset is an idea that many schools are using in their K-12 programs. There are many components to it, but here are the ones we focus on in PreK
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Mistakes are how we learn. Mistakes are not a big deal and the most important part after you make a mistake is that you FIX IT. We "stop and think then fix it"
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Keep trying and don't quit. Sometimes that means asking for help and sometimes it means trying over and over until you get it. We remind them often that (in the words of President Obama) "Hard things are hard"
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Your brain gets smarter when it has to work harder.
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There are many videos about growth mindset on YouTube. Class Dojo is one of our favorites. Click any of the videos with the green monster named Mojo.
Conscious Discipline
Conscious Discipline has a great site for parents that gives ideas to support social emotional development. Definitely check out "Shubert's House" on the site. It shows every room in a house and gives ideas of ways to build social emotional skills in each room.
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