Parents,
Throughout this year we will be studying Steven Covey’s Seven Habits for Happy Kids. This is a spin off of his best selling book for adults. The seven habits are:
- Be Proactive
- Begin With the End in Mind
- Put First Things First
- Think Win-Win
- Seek First to Understand thento be Understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the Saw
We will start Habit 1 tomorrow. We will first review the concept of “Love Lights”. We will talk about how certain things that happen to us can dim our Love Light. Like when a friend hurts our feelings or we become angry over something, or we lose something we love. We will then talk about how we can choose how we react to these feelings. This is called being proactive as apposed to reactive. A reactive person may say “He made me mad!” A proactive person would say “I chose to forgive”. A reactive person would say “I am like this because of how I was raised.” A proactive person would say “I chose to do things differently than how I was raised.” Being proactive is about choice. We can not prevent or protect our children from all the hardships that they will face. However, we can teach them to be proactive and choose how they will react to hardship. Thus turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
To go along with our habit of being proactive we will be reading a book called “Unlovable” by Dan Yaccarino. This is the story of a pug named Alfred who thinks he is unlovable because the cat was always telling him he was. Alfred then makes a friend with a new dog on the other side of the wooden fence, but he lies to his friend and tells him he is a golden retriever. He lies because he is afraid that if his friend sees him he will think he is unlovable too. In the end Alfred learns to love himself no matter what the others say. It is a great story with great illustrations, and it is powerful in showing the children that they are able to choose how they react to others when their words and actions are hurtful. We will also read one of my favorite books – Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin. We will talk about how Pete does not cry when his new white shoes get dirty, he is proactive and chooses to be happy with whatever color they are.
We will be doing several different activities that tie into our math curriculum. We will be graphing how many letters are in everyone’s names as well as graphing the results of our apple tasting.
I wanted to share 2 quotes from Jane Nelsen’s book Positive Discipline that go along with the workshop that happened over the weekend:
“Children listen to kind, firm and consistent action more than they listen to words”
“You will do your best work as a parent/teacher when you are rested and reasonably content. Keeping yourself healthy isn’t selfish it’s wisdom”
Have a great week!
Ms. Jen and Ms. Martha