The Golden Rule

A large part of kindergarten revolves around the social and emotional development of the child.  We have many fantastic resources in order to help students learn self-regulation, understanding of emotions and perceptions, and social problem solving skills.  One of these programs is called Peekapak.  At the start of the year, we met a character from Peekaville, Leo the Hedgehog. He wrote us a letter sharing that he was nervous for the first day of school.  Through this interaction we worked through our own nervousness and built self-regulation skills.  We practiced identifying various emotions and found many ways to calm our bodies when our emotions are high.

This week, we have been working on our Respect unit.  After meeting Zoey (of Peekaville), we discussed the 'Golden Rule' - treat others the way you would want others to treat you.  We discussed the types of things Zoey did to her friends that were respectful and disrespectful.  We brainstormed our own list of ways to show respect to our friends. During play we focused on thinking of two times someone treated us with respect.  When we make ourselves aware of these interactions it helps us to consciously make better choices of how to solve problems and treat our friends.

We also learned how we can treat more than just people with respect.  We can treat objects and places with respect.  Students each found an object in the classroom that they care about or is very important to them.  They brought these objects to the carpet and shared why the object is important to them.  We then discussed how they treat these objects.  Students realized that they take better care of objects when they are important to them.  Students took turns sharing their important object with the class and shared ways they treat the object with respect.  The class decided that it would be respectful to make sure they treated all objects with respect by being gentle with objects, not throwing objects, and putting the object in its proper place when finished with it.  We also discussed how we treat places with respect as well.  Students shared ways they are respectful to their bedroom, grocery stores, restaurants, friends' houses, libraries, and our classroom.  They make sure to clean up after themselves, keep the place tidy, and put things away where they belong.

We will continue to practice being respectful in and out of school!