Filling our Toolbox

Over the past few weeks, the children have been learning different problem solving strategies to use to fix their own problems. We focus on two strategies each week and then add them to our 'toolbox' in our 'Safe Place.'

To learn to use the new strategies, we role play and also talk about problems we have encountered during playtime and discuss and suggest different strategies that might work in those situations the next time they occur to help us work through the problem. 

The children are really using the strategies with and without encouragement and are beginning to help each other choose a strategy when in need.
I want the children to learn that God gave us all different emotions and all of them are ok. We can learn from every mistake we make. When we can examine what makes us sad, anxious, afraid, or angry we can learn to adjust our behavior going forward to possibly eliminate arriving at that same result in the future. Of course, along the way it will also help in our social interactions with peers.
These are strategies or "tools" that we have learned to use thus far:

For those times when anger gets the best of us, we have a 'Safe Place' to go to in our classroom to work through our emotions. This is a place where no one will judge us or get angry at us because we don't know quite what to do. It is a 'Safe Place' to breathe deeply, calm down, and then think things through more rationally and decide how we can handle the same problem in a better way next time. Perhaps practicing using the strategy in the 'Safe Place' will help us in the future to feel more confident.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

It's all good!