Living Love & Logic Tip #71

Do you know someone who believes that they are owed all the perks of success without having to expend a single drop of the perspiration required to earn them?

Have you met a person who lacks the skills required to earn a living yet believes they are too valuable to do the jobs available to them?

Perhaps you also know someone who's always unhappy, never feels "fulfilled," and resents those who've done the most for them.

It's deceptively easy to slip into giving our kids too much. It's also easy to begin expecting far too little. When this happens, we create kids with what I call the Over-Indulgence/Under-Expectation Syndrome:

• Entitlement thinking ("The world owes me the best!")

• Lack of marketable employment skills

• Lack of self-respect coupled with alternating feelings of dependency and hostility

Is there any hope? You bet! If your child displays any of the following signs, it's time to act quickly to reverse the problem:

• Displays an attitude of false superiority
• Expects only the finest things
• Manipulates others to get what he or she wants
• Has difficulty waiting or working for what he or she wants
• Is careless with possessions, frequently losing, neglecting, or destroying them
• Views his or her teachers with contempt
• Refuses to do chores, does them very poorly, or demands to be paid to complete them
• Constantly interrupts and demands to be the center of attention
• Only associates with people who can give him or her something
• Refuses to accept responsibility for bad behavior

If reading this hits a nerve, it's time to begin giving less and expecting more. The first step in this process involves learning how to avoid getting pulled into your child's attempts to argue and manipulate. Experiment with calmly repeating the following Love and Logic "one-liner":

I love you too much to argue.

The next step involves studying the Love and Logic parenting package that best fits your child's age level. From this package, you'll see how to take concrete steps toward raising a personally responsible, thankful, and happy child.
To read more from Love and Logic click HERE! This site is LOADED with so many useful tools for parents!

Geometry and Toddlers!

This toddler is learning geometry by Gluing spheres!
MATHEMATICS
2.PK.1  Sort objects by similar attributes (size, shape, and color.)
4.PK.1a  Identify circles, triangles, and squares.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
6.PK.1  Demonstrate skills in eye-hand coordination
6.PK.2  Demonstrate the muscle strength, dexterity, and control needed to manipulate items.

Tt, Trucks, Tractor, Tracks

This week we focused on the letter Tt and the color brown. 

LANGUAGE

1.K.3  Recognize and name upper and lower case letters of the alphabet

CREATIVE EXPRESSION

2.PK.4  Identify color, shape, and texture through art experiences.

The students got to experiment with different types of Tires on Trucks and Tractors and see what kinds of Tracks each one made in Brown paint! 

SCIENCE

P.PK.2  Explore and demonstrate how objects move

SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL

G5.PK.1  Identify direction and location (up/down and above/below).

LANGUAGE

6.PK.1 Experiment with writing tools and materials to communicate.

5.PK.2b Trace and progress to copying basic shapes (horizontal line, vertical line, X. plus sign, circle, etc.)

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

3.PK.1  Demonstrate locomotor movements such as up, down, forward, and backward.

What a fun educational mess!

SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL

2.PK.3b  Clean up or put away toys and materials when finished.

Puzzling Results

Pinching, pushing, pulling while stringing helps develop small motor skills

Check out what our toddler age student was learning while doing a simple puzzle!

Puzzling Results
March 11, 2013

You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
-Stanislaw J. Lec

 

Susan Levine, Ph.D., from the University of Chicago, offered these insights on spatial thinking in preschoolers on the LearnNow website:

"As studies mount that spatial thinking can actually be enhanced by specific activities at the pre-K level, what can we say about methods that actually work? Our latest published work homed in on the dynamics of puzzle play with children as they migrated from ages 2 to 4.5. We tracked 53 pairs of kids and their primary caregivers (mostly mothers), at multiple intervals for 90 minutes per visit, recording the encounters on video.

"One of the strongest take-home messages from our study is that richer engagement with puzzle play at 2 produced a stronger grasp of STEM-centric concepts at 4.5. Specifically, the children who showed the most engagement with puzzle play at 2 stayed on their trajectory throughout our study period. Moreover, the strong puzzlers, when tested at age 4.5, performed well above their age peers in one of the gold standard tests for spatial skills — the ability to mentally rotate an object.

"So what’s the link between puzzle and spatial? Mastering the placement of puzzle pieces inherently compels the mind — young or old — to recognize shapes and patterns in certain objects and then to imagine how they might fit into the larger whole. More often than not, the skilled players must rotate the piece in their minds to conceive of its place, and then must test their hypothesis by actually trying to place it where they believe it to belong."
GOOD JOB!

Living Love & Logic Tip #70

Maybe you know a kid who’s mastered the art of shooting looks that kill. Maybe this "kid" is really an adult who’s maturity-challenged. Here are some tips:

Resist the urge to act like a child.

Are you like me? Do you ever find yourself tempted to reciprocate to your child’s snotty attitude with a mucus-like one of your own?

Resist this temptation and do your best to remain calm.

Give honest feedback while making the problem belong to your child.

Kids need to get honest feedback about how they come across to others…and the impact this is likely to have on their OWN lives. With a strong dose of empathy, experiment with saying:

When you stick your tongue out and say those nasty things,

you're really no fun to be around. I will always love you,

but few others will if you continue to act that way.

That would be a pretty lonely life.

Take good care of yourself by setting and enforcing healthy limits.

Becoming a doormat only teaches your child to treat others like doormats. Examples of healthy limits include:

I play with kids who talk nicely.

I cook dinner for people who express thankfulness rather than complaining about what I serve.

Feel free to join us when you can act sweet.

I enjoy providing privileges to kids who talk and act nicely.

Also, set firm limits over television and video game use.

Most television content glorifies nasty, sarcastic attitudes. Too much time spent interacting with video games makes it tougher for kids to display patience and grace with real-life people.

Nasty looks and nasty comments aren’t just annoying…they’re hurtful to those who deliver them. That’s why you shouldn’t feel guilty for taking a firm and loving approach to the problem. For more tips and techniques readLove and Logic Magic: When Kids Leave You Speechless.
To read more from Love and Logic click HERE! This site is LOADED with so many useful tools for parents!

Address Field Trip

We focused on addresses this week.  We wrote each student's address on a paper and they each worked on memorizing it. 

 

MATH

1.PK.3a  Recognize and read numerals 0-5.

 

Then we walked around Ms. JoAnn's neighborhood to see actual numbers representing addresses. 

 

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

2.PK.1  Demonstrate a basic form in walking, running, climbing, jumping, hopping, and walking up and downstairs.

5.PK.3  Interact positvely with others regardless of personal differences.

1.PK.5  Identify some safety rules (pedestrian safety).

 

SCIENCE

N.PK1.a Observe their world.

N.PK1.b Ask questions about their world.

 

Some addresses were on the curb..

LANGUAGE

1.PK.4 Recognize environmental print and symbols

1.PK.5 Demonstrate awareness that print carries a message.

 

some were by the front door...

SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL

H3.PK.1 Begin to understand that differences exist between home and school.

and some were on a mailbox.

Happy smiling faces!  The students love being outside!