Last week was No Name Calling week.

At my school, the social worker, her intern, the school psychologist and I celebrated the week with several school wide activities. Recently, we have presented a diversity lesson to students grades 2-5 and we thought this would be a great continuation to our lesson.

Each day last week, either a student or staff member reminded students to use kind words when talking to one another. Students were also reminded to try to be caught being kind.

Teacher were given smiley face stickers to give out to students they “caught” being kind.

Teachers were also given a “kindness stick” to use for an activity once or twice per out the week. They were asked to sit their students in a circle for 10 minutes and pass around the stick. Whoever was holding the stick had to give a compliment to the person next to them. The idea was for each child to practice giving and accepting compliments.

Lastly, the art teachers had each of their students make posters about being kind. 

The teachers did give out stickers to their students and some used their kindness stick, but we were most impressed by the art posters which were displayed around the school. Each student wrote something different and meaningful.

We are hoping that the students thought about the way they talk and act and how they can being a little bit more kind over this week.

 Search #kindwordsmatter to see more pictures on instagram or Facebook.

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No name calling week

Today begins national no name calling week. If you work in a school Share what activites you have planned for the week. Stay tuned as I will post my activities later in the week.

My mouth is a volcano

This book is one of my favorites. It is about a boy who interrupts others all the time. It's a great book for all age elementary clients.

Here is the amazon link:

My Mouth Is a Volcano! 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1931636850/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_9RtMwbH4GT8M5

The book comes with a cd with worksheets, but I also created my own activities.

Although the book is about interrupting I connect it to any kind of behaviors which  clients struggle to control. 

I do this by having clients identify ways they "erupt" and they we talk about negative consequences of their "eruptions". 

Then clients make their own volcano and write down ways they "erupt" and then on the side they write ways to stop their "erupting".

Below is a sample of a volcano a client made in session. 

 

Thanksgiving Turkeys

I like to do activities with my clients that connect to the Holidays. For Thanksgiving, I always do a Turkey activity. Pinterest is my go to for new ideas each year and then I modify the ideas to create counseling activities.

Below is a picture of the turkeys I made this year. For my younger clients I drew the turkey bodies and cut out the feathers. For the older clients, I showed them my turkey and had them make their own. 

I asked my clients to think of 5 things they were thankful for and for some clients this was a hard task.

This activity can be used for clients working on multiple goals. For pre-k and kindergarten clients it was a following directions activity and for older clients it helped them to think of positive things instead of always focusing on the negative. 

A fellow colleague used this activity as a feelings activity. 

One could also ask clients to write down coping skills on the turkey feathers or any other one or two word ideas that would fit on turkey feathers. 

Behavior Chutes and Ladders 

Being that I am an elementary school based therapist I spend a lot of time discussing how to improve behavior. Honestly, my clients really do not like just sitting and talking.

 I was super excited when the school social work intern gave me this idea for Chutes and Ladders. 

Her idea was to put sticky notes with negative behaviors on top of each slide in the game. When the child had to go down a slide they can understand that negative behaviors have consequences.

I added to her idea and put sticky notes with positive behaviors at the bottom of each ladder. The children saw that positive behaviors get rewarded.

I had my clients give me examples of how time they engaged in both the good and bad behaviors and what happened as a result. 

If the clients have to slide down the slides to many times they get upset and that is a great time to practice relaxation techniques such as deep breathing. 

Try it and let me now how how your clients like this game.

Goals

After about a month of working with my clients I identify two to three goals to work on with each client. Often both myself and my clients lose sight of their goals being that there are daily crisis that happen in school and at home. 

This year my own personal GOAL, is to try and keep focused in sessions on the client's goals instead of getting sidetracked. A supervisor gave me an idea to have clients write their goals down and hang them on the wall as long as they were not too personal. I loved that idea. 

This year, I created a "garden" using my client's flowers with their goals written on the flowers. 

I traced each client's hands and had them write down their goals in their own words on their hands. Then they decorated their hands and added a stem to create a flower. 

I wrote the words "see how we will grow" on top of the "garden". 

Each sessions clients can look at their flower and see how they are progressing towards their goals.

Feelings Posters 2 

Thanksgiving had come and gone and so had winter break, but my feelings wall still had pumpkins. 

This week I decided they had to go. Being that I love arts and crafts, I thought of my magazines sitting on my shelf and I decided to create feeling collages. 

I again reviewed feeling words. Then I instructed my client to cut out  people, animals or things with faces to represent different feelings. This sounds easy, but magazines mostly feature happy people. My clients had to be creative and really search through the magazines. They did a great job finding other feelings. 

After the client found all their pictures they had to identify which feeling was being portrayed in the picture. I also asked them to tell me why they thought the person or thing was feeling that way. 

The clients enjoyed this and once again were proud to hang up their work.

Feeling Posters

Feelings - a word we probably use about 20 times a day if not more. We ask our clients how they are feeling, how they felt when they did X, how they feel now etc. 

The problem is many of our clients cannot identify more than a few feelings. How many times has a client said he/she is so mad when really they are disappointed or sad???

Therefore, I am always looking for new and exciting ways to have my clients learn to identify and express their feelings. 

One of my favorite activities to do around Halloween is Pumpkin Carving. No I am not crazy and I do not bring in real pumpkins....

I review feeling words with my clients and we look at pictures or act out how one's face looks when they are feeling that way.  

Then I draw or have my older clients draw 4 empty pumpkins and then they pretend to crave them by decorating the pumpkins with different feeling faces. The client's love this activity. When they are done coloring we discuss times the client felt those feelings

This year I did the activity on poster size papers and decorated a wall with the posters.