Body Language - Friends and Feelings with Mother Goose Time

This week we are continuing to learn about relationships and emotions in our Friends and Feelings monthly unit with Mother Goose Time.

One of the things we are always working on with our preschoolers is self regulation. During this month the kids have had to focus on identifying their emotions and how their emotions come out in their body language. Self awareness has helped them make better decisions and to self regulate. I notice that they are more aware of their emotions. For example, if they are angry, they are more cognitive in their decision to either hit, say means words, or use another way of solving their problem like talking or telling an adult; even just taking some time to themselves to calm down.

Journalling

We are keeping a journal about our emotions. I am helping the kids write sentences and they are drawing pictures.

Music

Every month we pull out our music that comes in our box for the month. To go with our them for this day we sang the song Body Language

'What can you say without saying a word

What can you do to show me your mood

Body language, body, body, body language...'

Through another song we are learning about kids that are different yet the same, like kids that can't see, or hear, or use their legs. I love that we are talking about this. Several years ago I went to a children's clothing store in town with my kids where there was a little girl in a wheel chair. I listened to the exchange between my kids and this little girl. To my horror, my kids blurted out, 'How come you are in that chair? Why can't you use your legs?'

 I moved towards them to hush them to take the situation in hand feeling slightly embarrassed by my children's insensitive question. But before I had a chance the little girl chimed in, 'Oh, my legs don't work. I was born this way and I use this chair to get around.' 

'Oh,' my son said. 

His question answered, he moved on to continue playing with her; the fact that she was in a wheel chair was not an issue to him. Seemingly, answering my sons question, was not an issue to this little girl either. Both of them were not uncomfortable. On the way home from the store we had a chat about people that are different. Children may go a long time without meeting many children that are different than themselves. It's a good idea to talk about what disabilities are and challenges that some people face, but also to talk about how those people are still just like them. They still have the same feelings as them and no one likes to be pointed at or talked about. Everyone wants friends and once we make friends with someone with a disability and have shown them we care about them as a person, then we can ask them a personal question understanding that they may not want to answer and accepting that, that's ok.

Body Language

To go along with our theme of Body Language, the kids got to explore ASL (American Sign Language). We practiced forming some of our alphabet in sign language. ASL is challenging for my full grown hands; it was really challenging for the kids to form some of the letters in their names. It involves some big stretching for little fingers.

Art

We made these I love you hand signs by tracing our hands, cutting them out, attaching them to sticks and then bending the paper fingers into the sign for 'I love you.' It had them saying, 'I love you,' to everyone all day.

Empathy

Which leads me to what I feel like the theme for this month has been about - empathy. And gaining empathy at a young age is powerful. The discussions we've had this month around feelings and friendships have brought us back to this over and over again; putting yourself in your friends shoes. Asking how they feel when we say we don't want to play with them or take their toys. How does it feel when that happens to us? 

As parents we tend to have these conversations in the moment. We talk to kids about how it feels for that friend when they take their toy right after it's happened but having these conversations in a positive way this month without an incident bringing them up has been such a great experience. These kids are gaining empathy and compassion. I LOVE IT!!

Disclosure: I receive Mother Goose Time Curriculum free of charge for educational purposes in return for posting my honest experiences using the curriculum. Photos of children featured on my blog for review of Mother Goose Time are used with signed consent of the child's parents. I welcome any questions or concerns.