Finishing Up With Careers

This week I will be in all PK, kindergarten, and 1st grade classes and we will finish up our lesson on careers. We will read the book "When I Grow Up" by Al Yankovic and play a game where I give the kids clues about hidden career puppets (pictured below) and they try to guess the career. If they guess correctly, they get to hold the puppet or figurine during the rest of the lesson. Believe me, simply getting to hold the puppet is actually VERY exciting to them! ;-)  After we read the story and play our game, the students will write/draw about what they want to be when they grow up. Look for these to come home this week. It may be fun to hold onto this and show them when they are getting ready to go to college and/or choose their career what they wanted to be in early elementary school and see how it compares! In kindergarten I wanted to be an archaeologist for a long time and live in Montana with a bunch of horses! ;-) Boy have things changed!! Not even close to what I ended up choosing to do or where I ended up living!

In January we finished up with "confidence" as our SEL Word of the Month and are now on the word "self-discipline" for February. Many kids got their names on the wall for showing confidence in January! In addition to what we do at school to instill these character traits in our students, please also work with them on developing these traits at home! For this months word of the month, "self-discipline", tell them some stories about times you had to practice "self-discipline" and what the payoff you received for that was. For example, "I worked really hard in school and ______ is what happened because of that." "I practiced baseball every day when I was younger and because of that I got on the team!" There are many examples you can use: going to college, learning to swim or ride a bike, practicing an instrument, etc. Let your kids understand that the reward is the end product you receive from practicing self-discipline and that is a wonderful and natural reward to receive! Help them to also understand they don't have to be so hard on themselves if they make mistakes along the way and that mistakes are normal and can be corrected. Positive praise goes a long way! Have a great week!! :-)