Hearts and Minds

$28.95

Susanna Palomares, Trish Rowland & Kelly Rowland

Created by experienced educators, this engaging book of stories, activities, and Sharing Circles provides a wealth of fun, easy-to-use after-school resources. Aimed at after-school instructors who want to involve their children in inviting experiences while teaching important life skills, Hearts and Minds enhances the social, emotional, and language abilities of children while involving them in meaningful learning opportunities. Use these inspiring activities, stories, and discussions to create all this while covering these important themes:

• Respect
• Kindness
• Tolerance
• Service to Others
• Responsibility
• Self-Control
• Peer Pressure

Introduction

Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are all interwoven processes, and each helps build and strengthen the other. Through its variety of activities, Hearts and Minds fosters the relationship between these four necessary skills while helping to fully develop each. Hearts and Minds provides multiple opportunities for children to read and listen to stories, to listen and respond to verbal directions, and to read and write on their personal Experience Sheets. They get to create their own stories and write about their own lives. The Sharing Circle provides the opportunity for the children to share their ideas verbally, which is the prime method for developing oral language skills. Listening to others share their thoughts helps develop effective listening skills. Through all this sharing and listening the children are learning the conventions of conversation and appropriate listening and speaking behavior. Through the Sharing Circles the children learn to clearly express their thoughts and feelings so others can understand.

Hearts and Minds also directly affects the social and emotional development of children in a number of ways. Each unit has a social-emotional character theme that is fully developed and explored through the stories, activities, and Sharing Circles. As the children are actively engaged in talking, sharing, listening and cooperatively doing, they are learning important skills for getting along with others. Discussions and self-reflection encourage self-awareness and self-knowledge. By following rules of good communication in the Sharing Circle and other activities, the children get to express their thoughts, feelings and ideas and to learn to be respectful of, and appreciate, the ideas and feelings of others.

Through its integration of language development and social-emotional learning, Hearts and Minds is designed to help children grow into capable and caring young people.

Primary Subject Area – Emotional Intelligence

Grades 3-6, 158 pages, 8-1/2 x 11, paperback, reproducibles