Reed School's December Newsletter
This Month's SEL Focus: Relationship Skills
December at a Glance
Mark Your Calendars...
As you know, the students' last day of school before Winter Break is Wednesday, December 21st. Please note: Students will be dismissed at 2:50 pm on the 21st.
Winter Break: Thursday, December 22nd through Monday, January 9th.
There is no school for students on Monday, January 9th due to a Teacher Institute Day.
School resumes for students on Tuesday, January 10, 2023.
On behalf of the Reed School family, we wish you and yours a safe, healthy, and joyous winter break.
Winter Class Parties
To kick-off the holiday season, students will celebrate winter class parties on the 21st with their classmates. Once again, if you'd like to send in "treat" bags, only non-edible items are allowed. We thank you in advance for your support.
Reed's Lunch Menu
Reed Celebrates November Students of the Month
Reed students who demonstrated responsible citizenship throughout November were celebrated in a very special way. Three students from each classroom were recognized for their outstanding efforts. Students nominated for this prestigious honor demonstrated the 3 B's in our pledge consistently throughout the month.
All students nominated for the monthly award were recognized and celebrated during a Morning Message. The District 92 Foundation for Educational Excellence generously funded the lawn signs for this school-wide project. Look for Student of the Month signs soon in your neighborhood!
Congratulations to Reed School's Students of the Month of November!
News From the Nurse
CASEL's 5 Social-Emotional Learning Competencies
Each month we focus on a CASEL SEL competency. This month's SEL focus is on Relationship Skills, which is the fourth component in the CASEL wheel. Each month I read picture books and stories to the children to help them make connections to the CASEL competencies. These competencies are taught in conjunction with our Second Step Program.
What are the CASEL 5? "The CASEL 5 addresses five broad, interrelated areas of competence and examples for each: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. The CASEL 5 can be taught and applied at various developmental stages from childhood to adulthood and across diverse cultural contexts to articulate what students should know and be able to do for academic success, school and civic engagement, health and wellness, and fulfilling careers."
Below are links from CASEL/PBS for parents to access to learn more about the CASEL 5 SEL Competencies:
December's Social-Emotional Learning and Second Step Lessons
This Month's Second Step Focus: Empathy and Compassion Every Day
Over the month of December, Reed staff members will be covering a variety of topics during their SEL time, including feelings in my body, naming those feelings, calm down strategies, and managing learning challenges.
Goals this month:
-Help every child identify, understand, and respond in a caring way to how someone is feeling;
-Teach students how to have empathy and show compassion; and
-Model and encourage use of empathy outside the Second Step lesson time.
Social-Emotional Learning and Support Isn't Just for Kids
Managing Your Own Emotions: The Key to Positive, Effective Parenting
(Taken from PBS Kids for Parents)
Wander any playground or mall, and at some point you are likely to observe a parent coaching her child to take deep breaths in and out to calm herself, or directing her to “use her words” versus hitting, kicking or grabbing. These are indeed good parenting strategies for helping children learn to manage and express their emotions in healthy ways—a critical but not easy task, which resulted in many comments by parents to the tune of: “It’s managing our own emotions that’s the big problem.” Indeed, this has been my own greatest parenting challenge, as it has been for the hundreds of parents I have worked with. I am solidly convinced after 30 years of practice that the single most important skill for “positive” parenting over the course of our kids’ lifetimes is our own self-awareness and self-regulation as parents.
Parenting young children (really children of any age) is an intensely emotional experience. There is the pure pleasure of cuddling, playing, laughing, exploring, and delighting in your baby’s daily growth and discoveries. And then there are the challenges—the moments of stress, anger, frustration, and resentment—at not knowing what a baby’s cry means and how to calm her, at the totally irrational demands of a toddler, or at the aggressive behavior of an older child toward a new baby. These experiences naturally evoke strong feelings that can be hard to handle. But most of the behaviors that we find maddening are a natural part of growing up, and are not intended to be malicious; they are a child’s effort to cope with a difficult feeling or situation. Children need our assistance, not our anger.
So it is important to tune in to and manage our feelings, because how we react in these moments deeply affects our children’s ability for self-regulation, self-control, and overall emotional health far into the future. Research (and real life) shows that when parents react with emotional intensity and harshly, children’s distress tends to escalate, and whatever the problem at hand, it is less likely to get resolved.
Here are some strategies that can help:
Tune in to your feelings. Feelings are not right or wrong—they just are. It’s what we do with them that can be helpful or hurtful. When you get out of the business of judging your feelings, you can be more open to looking at and owning them–the first step in controlling and expressing feelings in useful ways. One dad so eloquently summed it up, going straight to the heart of the issue: “It’s important to learn to recognize your own triggers. It’s not fair to expect your children to deal with your baggage.”
We’re all human. It is the rare parent who wouldn’t be consumed with embarrassment, quickly followed by anger and resentment at a child, when, for example, at some family event she throws a fit for not getting the first piece of cake, while her adorable cousin is delighting everyone by helping to hand out the slices and taking the last one, so unselfishly, for herself.
Tuning in to your feelings allows you to make a conscious decision—instead of a knee-jerk reaction—about how best to respond. In this case, it might mean taking some deep breaths to clear your head, then calmly telling your child that you know she is disappointed, but it’s not possible to always go first, and that she will be okay—communicating confidence in her ability to cope. While remaining calm is hard work, the benefits are far-reaching and has payoffs far into the future. It allows you to stay connected with your child rather than increasing her distress by experiencing an emotional break with you; she feels understood, not shamed, which makes her more open to accepting the limit being set; and when you react calmly, it decreases the stress hormone in her own brain, which helps her calm more quickly. Staying calm also results in a lot less remorse for having lost it, and many fewer nights going to bed feeling like all you did that day was yell and stress on your kids—a common and painful experience for many parents.
Do the unexpected. When every bone in your body is moving toward explosion at some outrageous demand or provocative behavior, it can be very effective for your child (and you!) to give her a big bear hug or do something silly. This can reduce the stress and tension of the situation, and doing something totally unexpected can also put a stop the unwanted behavior. This is not coddling or giving in. If your child is telling you he hates you because you won’t let him have five more minutes to play (and he hasn’t finished his game yet!—he just needs FIVE MORE MINUTES!) and you approach him with a bear hug while saying, “It looks like you need a big mommy hug,” you are letting him know you hear his frustration and empathize with it. You are not giving him five more minutes—which would be “coddling” or rescuing him from having to cope with a limit he doesn’t like. It may surprise you how this can turn the tides—doing the opposite of what he expects when he is in provocative mode. Or, don’t respond to his “bait” and just turn on some music and start to do a silly dance, all the way to the dinner table you are trying to transition him to. Simply say, “Join me,” and move along. It may sound hokey, but it can be very effective—and again relieve both his stress and yours. Give yourself a time-out. When you are having a hard time remaining calm in the presence of your child, be sure your child is safe (which might mean putting him in a pack ‘n’ play for a few minutes) and give yourself a minute or two to cool down. You might say: “Mommy needs some time to think about how I can best help you.” This can be a very powerful strategy in that it throws a monkey wrench into the process, which can sometimes halt the child in his tracks. And it allows you to remain present even in the face of the negative emotional intensity these situations often arouse. It also serves as very powerful role-modeling for your child about how to manage strong emotions—exactly what you are trying to teach. This gets you out of a reactive state and gives you time to think about the meaning of your child’s behavior and what you want him to learn from the experience. It’s much more likely you will come up with a response that sets the limit or guides your child’s behavior while remaining nurturing.
This strategy can be especially powerful when used together with your spouse or partner, especially when you are at odds about how to respond to your child: “Mommy and Daddy need to have a little pow-wow to think about how we can help you with this challenge.” This sends an important message to your child, beyond modeling self-control, that you are a thoughtful parenting team and are working together to help him learn to cope.
Managing strong negative emotions is surely much easier said than done. But it’s worth the effort, because the payoff is huge, for you and your child. As one wise parent puts it: “How you react to things is how they’ll learn to react to things…. You have to be in control of yourselves if you want them to be in control of themselves.”
Feelings Thermometer: Taken From Ready4K
The Feelings Thermometer uses visuals to help kids gauge how they’re feeling in that moment. Below are 4 reasons why I think they're worth sharing with families.
- It’s easy to use for kids of all ages, with pictures or colors for the younger ones and words for older kids.
- It builds parental understanding by offering behaviors that might accompany these emotions, in addition to naming the emotions themselves.
- It gives a few actionable choices to deal with the feelings.
- Bonus, it works for adults too!
Family Math Problems of the Month
Finding Math in Reading and Science
Feel free to tackle some math problems together as a family. Have fun!
Problem #1
Marcia and Gwen have been earning tokens in class for each time they turn in a homework assignment. Gwen is excited to have 34 tokens until she learns that Marcia has 4 times as many tokens as she does. How many more tokens does Gwen need to earn to catch up to Marcia?
Problem # 2
Pablo and Dylan were doing research for a science presentation. They worked for 45 minutes and then took a 20 minute break. Then they worked for another hour. If they finished at 7:00, what time did they start their research? Use objects or drawings to show how you determined your solutions.
Problem # 3
Mr. Green counts how many students turn in their homework each day. Yesterday, 5 more girls than boys turned in their homework. If 6 boys turned in their homework, how many girls turned in their homework? How many children turned in homework yesterday?
News From Physical Education
We have been working hard on cup-stacking/speed-stacking in the gym. This really helps promote eye-hand coordination, self confidence and grasping and releasing fingers. It helps students really workout their brains. The week after break we will be doing relay races and other games with our stacking cups.
Mrs. Kolcz and Miss T will be going to the IAPHERD convention to learn new and improved lessons for the gym. We can't wait to go and learn new things. December we will be doing many holiday games and our dance unit. We still have many units to cover such as juggling, soccer, muscles, bones and food groups. We pride ourselves in teaching kids many different things in PE, we don't like to just roll the ball out or play tag. We do like to play those games but there is so much to be taught about our health and wellness.
Please don't forget to wear your gym shoes. 2nd grade has PE four days a week and 3rd grade has it every day. We hope everyone has a great holiday season. All the best, Mrs. Kolcz and Miss T
News From the Music Room
December will be a festive month in the music room. Among many other things, the children will be moving and listening to music from Peter Tchaikovsky’s classic holiday ballet, The Nutcracker. We will also be talking about and listening to music by our December Composer of the Month, Ludwig Van Beethoven.
Reed School is excited to welcome the Oak Prairie Choirs to perform for us on December 21, along with our Holiday Sing-A-Long! The Third Grade Choir will also be performing.
News From the Media Center
Last week was Book Fair Week in the media center!!! The book fair was open November 14th-November 22nd. The students have been so excited to create their wish lists and shop at the book fair! I hope you enjoy reading all those great books together!
During media time, students have been learning how to create and edit Google Docs. We have been typing and editing seasonal passages about: apples, pumpkins, and leaves.
News From the Art Room
It's llama time in the art room in December! The 2nd grade students will be learning about the art of weaving. We'll study different types of weaving methods and materials, then learn a basic plain weave technique. We'll cut a llama from heavy cardstock, add features with colored Sharpies, then weave a colorful blanket on the llama itself.
The 3rd grade students will be creating a clay llama. We'll learn a simple slab rolling technique, then cut a llama shape from the slab. We'll etch features and curly fur details with clay tools, then use acrylic paint to add color. The final touch will be adding a yarn fringe along the bottom.