Helping Children Handle Fears

            Fear is a basic human emotion necessary for self-preservation and survival. However, fears and anxiety can interfere with a child’s growth and happiness. The following are suggested ways for parents to help.

•  Encourage Questions: To the child the unknown is always fearful. Questions are a child’s method of feeling secure through knowledge.
•  Talk Over Disturbing Events: Re-living the event through words, or playing it out, helps the child assimilate an anxiety that might otherwise be suppressed.
• Avoid Re-exposing a Child to Fear: A child’s fear cannot be undone by exposing him or her to the same frightening circumstances again. A child should have reassurance and relief after a scare. He can more easily face another fright if he has a memory of relief from the first. 
• Avoid Shaming: Shaming only adds insult to injury. It makes the child feel weaker and less able to deal with his fears. Shaming may cure the child of expressing fear, but the underlying anxiety will eventually be expressed in some other way (nightmares, tantrums, tension, stuttering, timidity, etc.)
• Look for Underlying Causes: Anxieties change with time and events. If the basic cause is not discovered, the anxiety may worsen and it’s origin become lost.
• Accept the Child’s Answers: Remember that understanding and kindness will be more effective than cross-examination. Sometimes the child truly does not know the cause of his anxiety.
•  Get In Tune with Your Child: We can’t rear our children to be absolutely free of fear. We can help our children grow to maturity unburdened by destructive anxiety; free to become spontaneous and creative adults with a greater capacity to enjoy themselves and contribute to the happiness of others. 

Y is for Yoga

As part of our letter Y activities, we had an awesome guest helper. Tessa's mom came and taught the kids a few yoga stretches and poses. The kids had fun exploring the way their body moves and trying new things. Thank you so much Kimi!!

I am in no way a yogi, I'm more of a soccer girl myself, but I love the movement and calming breaths that accompany yoga. I think we forget to breath deeply too often. I remember a friend giving me some advice about meditation and it suggested you have a mantra that you focus on as you are breathing deeply. Mine is "believe in miracles." There's a long backstory about postpartum depression and other such issues that accompany it, but it helps me focus and calm. My challenge for all you amazing people who work with your littles is to breath deeply today. Those sweet little ones will eventually grow up and this can be a fun time if we master the art of calm and breathing. (Don't worry, I'm giving this advice to myself as well.)

Check out some of the fun stuff we did in the video below. (Sorry the angle is a little weird, but you have to work with what you've got.)

Whirlpool Maker

Want to keep kids mesmerized and help them explore science at the same time? 

I give you one word: whirlpool. 

We have these awesome caps that you use to connect two soda bottles. If you shake it just right the water will funnel through one bottle to the other and make a whirlpool. They loved it!

You can buy it here.

W is for Wind

Hello world. So it's been a while because, if I'm keeping it real, I've been in a slump. Has that ever happened to you where the things that you used to enjoy seem not so enjoyable anymore? 

So, I'm trying to get myself out of it by just jumping back into things. Usually when I blog, I post things in order of when we have done them in class and I am super behind. So I made an executive decision - I'm going out of order. It goes against my nature that my husband might argue is slightly ocd, but it's what I feel like doing, so that is that.  

The great thing about teaching preschoolers is that so much of the world is exciting and new. This week we explored the concept of weather and wind. We read this awesome book:

Then we gathered around the table with a variety of objects in front of each student. The objects we used were a feather, penny, fuzz ball, straw, shell, rock, plastic spoon, and decorative pebble. We talked about what was in front of us and then made a guess whether the wind would blow each object or not. After we made a guess, I turned on my blow dryer to low and simulated a wind blowing. Then we would see if our guess was right. After, the kids sorted their items. 

 A simple, but fun science project for your littles!