Books are not only a great resource for developing reading skills, they are also a fantastic way to help kids develop healthy feelings and relationships. In the coming weeks, the First Book Marketplace will feature a collection of hand-picked books that address key aspects of social and emotional development.
In addition to the books, First Book has partnered with Molina Healthcare to provide helpful resources that teachers and parents can use to tie these engaging stories to healthy living. Teaching kids how to interact with others and manage their own emotions is an essential part of their development, just as important as their intellectual or physical development. These carefully curated books and resources are designed to do just that.
Here’s a sneak peek of the kinds of books and tips you can expect in the collection!
I Can Help by David Hyde Costello
A little duck gets lost until a helpful monkey comes along to lend a hand.
Brainstorm a number of situations that children may find themselves experiencing in which they need to ask for help. Next, identify who are the appropriate people in their family, school or community to ask for help in those situations. Examples could include calling 911 for firefighters in the case of a fire, talking with a teacher or parent for homework help, and visiting a doctor or school nurse if they are sick. This activity can be extended by role-playing. For example, one child can pretend to see a fire and call a firefighter for help. Then another group of children can pretend to be firefighters who come and put out the fire.
My Friend Maggie by Hannah E. Harrison
Paula knows Maggie is a great friend, but when Veronica says mean things about Maggie, Paula doesn’t stand up for her.
Letter writing, even when one doesn’t plan to give the letter to the addressee, can be a great tool for processing feelings and thinking through how to handle a conflict. Have the children write a letter from one of this story’s characters to another (such as from Maggie to Paula), explaining how that character’s actions made her feel. Encourage students to try letter writing (even without giving the letters) when they face conflicts with their friends to help them express their feelings and think through how they would like the situation to be resolved.
For more books and resources from First Book and Molina Healthcare, please visit the health and wellness section on the First Book Marketplace.
The post Sneak Peek: Resources For Social & Emotional Development appeared first on First Book Blog.
Looking for a great way to celebrate Mother’s Day? Read a book together and try these activities.
The books below are just some of the books identified by Search Institute that model behaviors that make families stronger: collaborating, encouraging and exploring.
Read these books together and use the activities listed after each book to grow together as a family.
The kindness and generosity of the Acerra family helped their twelve sons become the longest-playing all-brother baseball team in history.
This book shows collaborating: learning, growing and solving problems with your child.
Try this after reading:
Your family is like a team. Each person plays a different role and has different talents. To help your family recognize these, sit down as a group and have each person write or draw pictures of a strength they think each member of the family brings to your team. Talk as a family about the work you do to support one another, as well as skills you can teach one another.
Abuela by Arthur Dorros; illustrated by Elisa Kleven
Take flight with Rosalba and her grandmother as they soar in Rosalba’s imagination all over New York City, visiting family and seeing places with special meaning to Abuela.
This book shows exploring: exposing your child to new ideas, experiences and places.
Try this after reading:
Maps offer fun opportunities to talk about and discover places of importance to you.
Talk with your child about familiar locations, like the places where friends and family live and work, then draw a map together that includes those spots. Or, ask your child to invent a world they’d like to travel to, then draw a map of it and pretend you’re visiting that place together. What do you see, smell or hear? Talk with your child about this new world and the things that make it different from your own.
My Name is Yoon by Helen Recorvits; illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska
Yoon feels unhappy after her family moves from Korea to the United States, until she gets encouragement at home and at school and learns to write her name in English.
This book shows encouraging: praising your child’s efforts and achievements.
Talk and ask questions as you read:
- Tell your child about a time you felt like you didn’t belong. ASK: Has that happened to you? What did you do? Did someone help you feel included?
- Yoon’s parents are proud of her when she sings to them in English. Remind your child about a time you were proud of him or her. ASK: What are you proud of?
Educators and program leaders serving children in need can find more books with tips and activities in the Build Strong Families with Stories section of the First Book Marketplace. Developed in partnership with Search Institute, through generous funding from Disney, each book comes with a FREE downloadable tipsheet with tips and discussion questions like the ones above.
The post Celebrate Mother’s Day: Read a Book Together! appeared first on First Book Blog.
The Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies has created a series of tipsheets to assist librarians in different sorts of libraries in dealing with and understanding accessibility issues. They’re short, easy to understand, come with references and cover a wide range of topics.
Unfortunately, they’re also out of date, or at least some of the links are. The Management one has links to Watchfire Bobby 5.0 and to WebXACT, which were discontinued in February 2008.
Thank you Jessamyn for these helpful ASCLA tipsheets. I am a member of a team of researchers from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama that is providing basic computer instruction to persons with cognitive disabilities. Our project website is http://www.slisoutreach.org/. Our goal is to offer technology, support, and hands on training that aids them in leveraging technology to achieve their personal goals. The tutorials and modules that we developed and are using are freely available on our website. Clearly, these ASCLA tipsheets are quite informative for our project, especially the first, “Library Accessibility: What You Need to Know: Developmental and Cognitive Disabilities.” Thank you again Jessamyn!
http://www.slisoutreach.org/