As small children begin to organize their worlds and translate thoughts into meaningful sentences understood by others, a sense of accomplishment develops.  They realize that through language, much information can be gained about the world, and others can be influenced to respond to their needs.  They also learn that language is a key to friendship.

The development of language in small children can be supported most effectively by educators and parents when they frequently converse with the children and encourage them to hold conversations with each other.  These verbal experiences strengthen not only the development of language, but also thought, which contributes to the child’s ability to be more self-controlling.  It is important to use concrete terms and normal inflection and pronunciation as in adult-to-adult conversation when talking to small children.  They should never be “talked down” to. 

How You Can Facilitate This Learning

Today’s Blog activity comes from our book, Magic Circle: Language Development and Social-Emotional Learning for the Early Years. The process we call a Sharing Circle with older students, elementary through high school, is referred to as a Magic Circle with pre-schoolers and kindergarten students.  As with Sharing Circles, Magic Circles are carefully structured safe social environments wherein young children can perform tasks, express themselves verbally, and receive positive acknowledgement for these actions and expressions.

Oral language is the principle mode of expression of Magic Circles.  By speaking to their fellow circle members (peers and leader) and by listening to what others have to say, children’s growing abilities to verbally communicate are utilized and strengthened.  Verbal expression is then built upon to inspire other forms of expression including art, reading, singing and drama.

Here is a Magic Circle Task entitled I Can Draw a Picture of Myself and Tell You About It for you to use with your children.

The Magic Circle has the same rules and structure as the Sharing Circle. If you want more information?

• Leading a Sharing Circle
• Sharing Circle Rules
• Books and Resources
• Free Activities
• Subscribe

Go here:

www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Here’s How It’s Done

Gather everyone into a circle. Explain the rules for sharing, and get agreement from everyone that they will follow the rules.

Magic Circle Rules:

• Everyone gets a turn to share, including the leader.
• You can skip your turn if you wish.
• Listen to the person who is sharing.
• There are no interruptions, probing, put-downs, or gossip.
• Share the time equally.

After everyone has shared, who wants to share, ask the discussion questions.

You can check the book out HERE.

Through self-awareness, students learn to give ongoing attention to their internal states, to know what they are feeling when they are feeling it, to identify the events that precipitate upsets and emotional hijackings, and to bring their feelings back under control.

Self-awareness allows students to manage their feelings and to recover from bad moods more quickly. Students who are self-aware don’t hide things from themselves. Labeling feelings makes them their own. They can talk about fear, frustration, excitement, and envy and they can understand and speculate concerning such feelings in others, too.

Lacking self-awareness, students may become engulfed by their feelings, lost in them, overwhelmed by them. Unawareness of what is going on in their inner and outer worlds sets the stage for lack of congruence between what they believe or feel and how they behave. Feelings of isolation (“I’m the only one who feels this way.”) occur when students are unaware that others experience the same range of feelings that they do. Without self-awareness students never gain control over their lives. By default, their courses are plotted by others or by parts of themselves which they fail to recognize.

Self-awareness can take the form of nonjudgmental observation (“I’m feeling irritated.”) or it can be accompanied by evaluative thoughts (“I shouldn’t feel this way” or “Don’t think about that.”) Although, in and of themselves, emotions are neither right nor wrong, good nor bad, these kinds of judgments are common and indicate that the neocortical circuits are monitoring the emotion. However, to try to abolish a feeling or attempt to take away a feeling in someone else only drives the emotion out of awareness, where its activity along neural pathways continues unmonitored and unabated — as neuroses, insomnia, and communication failures of all kinds testify.

Your Sharing Circle

Here’s a Sharing Circle for you that will let your students explore one aspect of self-awareness that they have experienced, and will continue to experience from time to time throughout their lives. It comes from The Sharing Circle Handbook, Topics for Teaching Self-Awareness, Communication, and Social Skills for students in grades K-12. The topic is, How Somebody Hurt My Feelings.

  Here’s Your Monday Morning Sharing Circle. Enjoy!

Do you want more information?

• Leading a Sharing Circle
• Sharing Circle Rules
• Books and Resources
• Free Activities
• Subscribe

Go here:

www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Here’s How It’s Done

Gather everyone into a circle. Explain the rules for sharing, and get agreement from everyone that they will follow the rules.

Sharing Circle Rules:

• Everyone gets a turn to share, including the leader.
• You can skip your turn if you wish.
• Listen to the person who is sharing.
• There are no interruptions, probing, put-downs, or gossip.
• Share the time equally.

After everyone has shared, who wants to share, ask the discussion questions.

You can check the book out HERE.