There are as many activities involving little children’s hands as there are, well, little children’s hands!  Who can resist a turkey traced from outspread fingers, or a caterpillar made from many little thumbprints?  Or, one of my children’s preschool favorites from Wrightstown Friends Nursery School, a booklet with every child’s name and photo – depicting all the ways our hands can help (Mia’s hands help button her sweater, Jack’s hands help a friend reach a toy…).

In our book, Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure, my co-author, Nefertiti Bruce, and I share a “handy” activity called “Give Me a Hand.”  This activity is fun, engaging, and also helps young children build important social and emotional skills such as initiative, self-regulation, and attachment/relationships.  “Give Me a Hand” also helps children learn the skills and behaviors used to play and learn with others.

Materials:

• Paintbrushes and washable tempera paint, or washable markers
• Emotions/feelings photos (download free from our website)
• Any children’s story with characters expressing a variety of feelings

What To Do:

Step 1: Gather the children together and explain what you will do.  Say, “We are going to talk and learn about how it feels to play in friendly ways, and how it feels when others aren’t kind or when sad things happen.  We will learn some ways to ask others to play, and some ways to say, ‘No thank you’ in kind ways.  We are going to have fun and get our hands messy!”

Step 2: Allow the children to draw or paint (with washable paint or markers) a smiling face on the back of their partner’s hand and a frowning face on the back of the other.

Step 3:  Tell the children to raise the hand that shows how they would feel. Say, “Raise the smile if it makes you feel happy!  Raise your frown if it makes you feel sad.”

Step 4:  Then ask, “How would you feel if…” questions using situations you make up (How does it feel when a friend invites you to play?), and also ones that you have witnessed from this group (How does it feel when someone tells you there is no room for you in the playhouse?)

Add more fun to “Give Me a Hand” by…

• Incorporating movement with fun instructions like, “Jump up if you would feel sad…”
• Show pictures to the children and ask, “How does the girl in this picture look; happy or sad?”
• Read a children’s story and pause throughout to ask how various characters in the story are feeling.
• Invite children to lead the activity by presenting their own “How would you feel if…” situations.

Step 5: End with a discussion of what words make us happy and make others feel good. Help children learn how to ask to be included or politely say “no”.  Try these…

• May I play with you?
• When you are done, may I have a turn?
• Please stop.  I don’t like that.
• Can we take turns?
• Do you want to play together?
• Thanks for asking me to play.  I want to finish this first though.

Watch a video of a teacher trying “Give Me a Hand,” or, download a free parent handout for this activity here.  Use activities like “Give Me a Hand” to help children become Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure!

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This post was contributed by Karen Cairone. Karen has been with the Devereux Center for Resilient Children, Early Childhood Initiative for the past 13 years. While with Devereux, she has co-authored several resources including Facing the Challenge DVD Series, Classroom Moments DVD, For Now and Forever: A Family Guide for Infants and Toddlers, and Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure.  Karen has two upcoming publications with Gryphon House.  Karen is editor of the DCRC national newsletter, and delivers training on topics related to social and emotional health and resilience around the country. Karen Cairone lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

  ~Helen Keller

When a crisis such as Hurricane Sandy shakes a child’s life, it is often up to teachers to recognize and identify signs that the child is suffering from continuing stress, and to help parents make appropriate decisions regarding next steps. Although teachers cannot provide therapy to children, they already have the tools they need to help children cope: storybooks.

With the effective use of a few literature-based activities and ideas, you can help promote children’s ability to cope and heal. The following excerpt from After the Crisis by Cathy Grace and Elizabeth Shores expands on the popular children’s book, It’s Mine by Leo Lionni.

In It’s Mine by Leo Lionni, three young frogs spend a lot of time arguing and bickering with each other. When a real crisis occurs, they realize that cooperation makes more sense than arguing.

Discussion Starters

Use the following prompts to encourage the children to talk about their experiences, either in the context of the book or in the context of a traumatic experience.

For 3- to 8-Year-Olds

• Were the frogs friends?
• How do you know the frogs were friends?

For 5- to 8-Year-Olds

• What was the frogs’ shelter in the storm? How did it keep them safe?
• Who protected the frogs from the rising water? How did they do that?
• Where did you stay in our hurricane (or other disaster)? Did you feel safe?
• Look of Leo Lionni’s artwork:
  • The animals, rocks, and plants look like cut paper.
  • Some of the cut paper has paintbrush strokes on it.

Art Center Activities

For 3- to 8-Year-Olds

• Experiment with cut paper pictures.

For 5- to 8-Year-Olds

• Make a picture using Leo Lionni’s technique.

Writing Center Options

For 3- to 8-Year-Olds

• Dictate or write a sentence or story about how you made your picture.
• Dictate or write a sentence or story about our storm (or other disaster).

For 5- to 8-Year-Olds

• Dictate or write a list of ways people can be rescued.

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After the Crisis: Using Storybooks to Help Children Cope is the companion book to Preparing for Disaster: What Every Early Childhood Director Needs to Know. After the Crisis also helps address other crises that can affect a child, including: earthquakes, epidemics and mass casualty incidents, fires and explosions, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and major storms, shelter experiences, and volcanic eruptions.

Fearless, Assertive, Strong-willed, Opinionated, Persistent.

Often these words are used to describe children with challenging behaviors.

Often these words are used to describe leaders.

With the NAEYC Professional Development Institute approaching next week, the conference theme of Leadership has been on my mind.  What makes a great leader?  If I am thinking of my own personal experience in the world of early childhood mental health, I can’t help but look to Linda Likins, Director of the Devereux Early Childhood Initiative (DECI).  She could not have accomplished all she did, building the DECI from the ground up over the past 15 years, if it weren’t for her fearlessness, assertiveness, strong-will, strong opinions, and persistence.

Some of my favorite leaders have these characteristics, and some of my favorite children with challenging behaviors have these characteristics.  So… what makes a child with all these great leadership qualities develop into a leader, or, fall by the wayside – often distracted from success and happiness by behavioral concerns?

I’d like to propose that a vehicle to help these children go down one path toward leadership, versus another path without a positive outcome, is this…

… awareness of, fostering of, and use of one’s Strengths.

Are you the caring adult in a child’s life who is going to celebrate and help nurture his or her strengths?

The American Psychological Association’s Road to Resilience states that many research studies identify a secure attachment with a caring adult as one of the strongest protective factors for children.  All children need someone who understands the importance of and believes in identifying and fostering their strengths.  These strengths could be related to skills and abilities, interests, the child’s personality, or social and emotional health.  Promoting these strengths helps a child develop strong protective factors.

If you have not explored the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment as a tool to identify strengths related to social and emotional health and protective factors, I wonder, what are you waiting for?  DECI’s suite of assessment tools and strategies to build strengths have the potential to identify which children are in need of stronger protective factors and healthier social and emotional skills as early as 4 weeks, and spanning the ages up to (at present) 8^th grade.

As I attend NAEYC’s PDI conference on Leadership next week, I am going with “the child with challenging behaviors” in mind.  I am convinced we can help direct a path for these children if we just realize and promote their strengths and potential… supporting the healthy development of a future generation of leaders.

This post was contributed by Karen Cairone. Karen has been with the Devereux Center for Resilient Children, Early Childhood Initiative for the past 13 years. While with Devereux, she has co-authored several resources including Facing the Challenge DVD Series, Classroom Moments DVD, For Now and Forever: A Family Guide for Infants and Toddlers, and Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure.  Karen has two upcoming publications with Gryphon House.  Karen is editor of the DCRC national newsletter, and delivers training on topics related to social and emotional health and resilience around the country. Karen Cairone lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

Spring brings an array of opportunities for renewal, revival, and new life.

We clean up our homes.

We weed out our closets.

We perk up our lawns and flowerbeds.

“Spring cleaning” helps us clean up the exteriors in our lives.

Why not use this time to do a little spring cleaning within ourselves as well?  Around the turn of the New Year, many of us make resolutions to be better people – we will be more patient, we will have more self-control, we will take better care of ourselves and others.

Spring is a great time to reflect and revisit those commitments.  What opportunities within ourselves do we have to build our protective factors?  Protective factors help us cope and bounce back in many aspects of our lives.  Here are some simple, yet fun, reflective strategies from Building Your Bounce to help renew commitment to strengthening protective factors within ourselves…

• Trust: Draw a circle.  Reflect on what trust means to you.  Inside the circle, write the names of the people who define trust in your life.  These people help strengthen your protective factors by providing consistency and a safe place to share and be yourself.  Ask yourself, how many people would put me in their circle of trust – why or why not?

• Laugh: Share a smile.  With a group of friends, family members, or co-workers, plan to share a weekly story, picture, video, joke, or situation that will make others laugh.  Depending on the size of your group, you can have a laugh a day, or more!

• Be Calm: Create a positive affirmation.  Do you have a mantra that motivates and calms you?  Perhaps “I can do this.”  “Believe.”  “Breathe.”  “Life may be crazy, but I am calm.”  Repeat this to yourself in times of stress to help you feel settled and get centered.

Now is a great time to do some spring cleaning within ourselves.  We can reflect on and plan to strengthen our protective factors as adults.

Recently, some of our team at the Devereux Center for Resilient Children’s Early Childhood Initiative met for a professional development retreat – we revisited many training sessions we have designed and delivered over the years.  We weeded out the unnecessary, pruned back the overwhelming, and planted new seeds of knowledge and growth.

I realized that with these team members, I was inspired to trust, laugh, and be calm.  I reflected and renewed my own commitment to my within protective factors.

What spring cleaning can you do within yourself?

This post was contributed by Karen Cairone. Karen has been with the Devereux Center for Resilient Children, Early Childhood Initiative for the past 13 years. While with Devereux, she has co-authored several resources including Facing the Challenge DVD Series, Classroom Moments DVD, For Now and Forever: A Family Guide for Infants and Toddlers, and Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure.  Karen has two upcoming publications with Gryphon House.  Karen is editor of the DCRC national newsletter, and delivers training on topics related to social and emotional health and resilience around the country. Karen Cairone lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

I recently wrote a little piece about resilience, and quoted a colleague of mine…

“Resilience is like a blanket in the back of your car… you never know when you are going to need it, but it is good to know it is there—just in case.”  ~ Nefertiti Bruce, co-author of Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure.

Since that article, I have been approached by a number of people who said they never really thought about resilience that way.  In fact, some shared that they never think about resilience at all.  One friend shared this insight, “You don’t think about resilience until you need it… then, it’s all you can think about.”

Paul LeBuffe, co-author of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA), among a variety of other resources, is fond of saying, “Devereux was into resilience before resilience was cool.”  This always makes our team smile – but is important for this reason.  Devereux has been creating resilience-based assessments, writing books, producing DVDs, and offering professional development for hundreds of thousands of people across the country, since 1996.  At this point, we feel like we’re getting it down pat.

In the past, resilience was viewed as something only at-risk children and families needed.  Not true, says Ann Masten.  She refers to resilience as “ordinary magic”.  It is something we ALL need, and magic it is.  It can help the most hopeless situation or devastation seem ripe with possibility.  It can light the way out of the dark in stressful or even, horrific, times.  When natural disaster or terrorists strike, resilience can help you cope and think your way to solutions and recovery.

On a personal level, I wasn’t thinking about my resilience on September 11^th, 2001.  I was in Washington State, just 26 years old… conducting a week-long training on, of all things, resilience.  With flights grounded, the group I was training, and myself, all took a vote— continue the training, or, cancel.  As a group, we decided that now, more than ever, was the time to be talking about resilience.

We got through that training week with many hugs, many tears, and many insights about our own personal resilience.  I recognized my own protective factors on that day and week, and have been grateful ever since to know that I do have a ‘blanket in the back of my car’, just in case.

Do you? 

Devereux offers a free, research-based survey of adult resilience.  Try taking the Devereux Adult Resiliency Scale yourself.  Perhaps some of the ideas in Building Your Bounce, the accompanying adult resiliency journal, will help you be your best resilient self.

This post was contributed by Karen Cairone. Karen has been with the Devereux Center for Resilient Children, Early Childhood Initiative for the past 13 years. While with Devereux, she has co-authored several resources including Facing the Challenge DVD Series, Classroom Moments DVD, For Now and Forever: A Family Guide for Infants and Toddlers, and Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure.  Karen has two upcoming publications with Gryphon House.  Karen is editor of the DCRC national newsletter, and delivers training on topics related to social and emotional health and resilience around the country. Karen Cairone lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.