Choices
One of the Conscious Discipline skills we use the most is the power of choices. If you want your child to do something give him two choices with both choices being the ” end in sight ” of what you need them to do. Ex: You want them to sit down for supper. You may walk to your chair and sit or you may hop to your chair and sit Which do you choose ? Another one. You want them to clean up their room. You may pick up the trucks or the blocks first. Which do you choose? Do you see how that works ? ! Try it !
To support this skill today we read ” Shuberts Choices. ” Shubert the lightning bug discovers the power of choices to help him stay focused while getting ready for school. Sara, Shubert’s Mom, models ways for adults to offer two positive choices to help children increase their attention span, follow through on a task, and improve their self-esteem. For example : Shubert, you can wear the red shirt with the S or the blue shirt with the S, which do you choose ? Shubert you can wear the jeans with no pockets or the jeans with the pockets in front ?
We also worked more on our names . How many letters are in my name ? This activity combined literacy with math !
Shaving Cream. Its KINDA against the rules because it says ” keep out of reach of children” but a couple times a year I get really risky. I make sure the kids are supervised so they didnt ingest it ( LOL ) and we wrote names and drew pictures . The room smells great and the kids hands are super clean ! Just call me rebel Debbie .
We finished up the Dial 3’s today. There were a few pieces here and there that needed to be done because a child was gone for the day. Now comes the huge task of scoring them all and entering them in the ABC computer system. Again, we do this so we have a base line of where kiddos are and what we might need to spend more time on AND to give data to legislators that proves Pre-K works ! We will do this again in May . I will schedule parent conferences soon to go over what we found out on the assessments , set some goals with you concerning what you would like to see your child excel in this year and how we can partner to make it happen and just a general check up of how our year has started out.
While waiting our turn to go in to get ready for breakfast we have been playing tag, racing and today we tried leap frog. The kids loved it. Games like leap frog have so many benefits. The obvious is the extra gross motor activity that takes place. Another strong benefit is being able to follow rules so that the game ” works.” If everyone hops at one time there would be no one to leap over. Having patience and waiting our turn to leap. This also requires some team building – working together. Last but not least, games like leap grog encourages the child to use their imagination !
Leap frog, Leap !