Responding to Children’s Anger
Take a moment and reflect: what is our first response when our child has an angry emotional outburst? Is it to stop the behavior? Or is it to understand what’s behind the anger, help them understand what’s behind the anger, and how to manage it? In a recent article in the Boston Globe Magazine, educator and parent Deborah […]
It’s Time to Play! Why Summer Play Matters
Imaginative and creative play is important for every child. Having fun exploring and discovering their world whether indoors or outdoors is essential in developing the foundation for social, emotional, and cognitive skills. In fact, play is a child’s work. ~Dr. Donna Housman Founder of Housman Institute and creator of begin to ECSEL At long last we can finally […]
A Q&A with Dr. Housman
In a recent webinar, Dr. Housman spoke to a group of over 3,000 early childhood professionals on “The Power of Emotional Intelligence from Birth to Age 8.” The webinar was framed around the impact the pandemic has on children, as well as educators and caregivers. As we move toward our “new normal”, and a new school […]
Why Our Emotions ™ Board is the Heart 💗 of Our Classroom
As co-teachers at a begin to ECSEL school, we have experienced countless moments where ECSEL language, tools, and techniques are so vital to shaping children’s emotional learning and overall character development. One of our favorite tools to use in our classroom is Our Emotions Board. When should I use Our Emotions Board? Whether it be a transitional tool in […]
For Our New Normal Make Emotional Well-Being a Priority
As this tumultuous school year winds down we are all owed a deep breath! And yet we also need to reflect on what this unprecedented time has taught us and think forward to what lies ahead in our “new normal.” As we slowly emerge from one pandemic, we are in fact facing another — one […]
Self-Regulation Matters — Not Only for Students, but for Teachers too!
The beginning of May marks the launch of Mental Health Awareness Month, and I am again reminded of just how much children’s mental health is at the core of the work I do as a begin to ECSEL educator. All of my interactions with and responses to the children I teach comes from a place of sensitivity […]
Emotional Intelligence from Birth: 5 Foundational Mental Health Benefits
There is a growing appreciation that emotional intelligence is more than a wish list of optimal social skills. Emotional intelligence is a set of competencies that enable you to understand and manage your own emotions and those of others—a critical prerequisite to lifelong learning, relating and relationships, and personal and professional growth. But perhaps the […]
“Just One of Those Days”: Helping Teachers Cope One Step at a Time
Let’s face it, we’ve all had “one of those days” where things seem to go from bad to worse to completely overwhelming in a matter of minutes. If you are a teacher, you definitely know what I’m talking about, especially now. What defines a day like this is different for everyone. There are so many […]
Acknowledging Your Uncertainty Shows Your Kids the Way to Resilience
We’re hitting a strange anniversary this month. It’s been a year since the pandemic’s first reported deaths in the U.S., and this week, we crossed the dark threshold of a half-million deaths due to COVID-19. With the vaccinations available to more and more people, there’s a sense of light at the end of the tunnel. […]
ECSEL in the Everyday Classroom
Join our begin to ECSEL educator and coach, Emily, regarding 5 common child scenarios, and sentence examples and advice to get children back on track to learning! As a begin to ECSEL educator, I often find that the most teachable moments are not outlined in a science lesson or correcting a child’s pencil grasp, or even a Venn Diagram activity, but in identifying, […]
The Building Blocks of Dramatic Play
“Dramatic Play.” For my fellow early childhood educators, these words can hold many different meanings: imagination, creativity, a clean-up disaster, playing dress-up, tearful negotiations over who gets to be the “mommy,” “Welcome to our restaurant! What would you like to eat?” and so much more. That is the beauty of dramatic play– it is a […]
Lessons from a Year of Teaching in a COVID-19 World: What Teachers Need Now
Hopeless. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Depressed. Exhausted. Those are just some of the emotions that educators report feeling in the past year since COVID-19 infiltrated our lives and schools. Teachers were tossed into the virtual world without tools or blueprints, using trial and error to figure out remote teaching for themselves, and remote learning for their kids, who […]
The Power of Choice
Sometimes it seems like a young child’s favorite words are “why” and “no.” Why do we have to go to the store, why do we have to leave the park, no I don’t want carrots for lunch, no I don’t want to wear pants. We can give them any variation of answers…because we need food […]
A New Year’s Resolution: Making Educators’ Well-Being A Priority
With the New Year on our doorstep, we look at all educators have been through and see how much attention and work needs to be focused on educators’ mental health and well-being. This will not happen with the flip of a switch. In fact, this will undoubtedly require a process of unlearning old habits and […]
Helping Children Develop Healthy Habits with Technology Use
We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” — Steve Jobs My feeling about technology in general is very Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Having too little exposure isn’t good, but too much – a few hours turns into six — is detrimental to their brain development and mental health. The temptation for […]
Helping Children Understand & Celebrate Differences from the Beginning
Children are born ready to learn and it is not only traditional skills that we need to teach from a young age, we also need to foster children’s understanding of their emotions and those of others from the very beginning.1 By reaching children in their earliest years we have the extraordinary opportunity to shape children’s […]