Manners Part 1

This lesson was a little difficult because of how sensitive Hailey is. When I talk about anything negative, she picks up on the feeling of it very quickly and shuts down a little. So with that in mind, here's how our lesson went.

First, I had puppets act out several situations on playing with friends and using nice words. Each situation had two endings with the incorrect way mentioned first to give the child a chance to figure out how to approach it better. Hailey didn't give me any suggestions she just enjoys watching the puppets.

Then the children are supposed to dramatize a different set of situations that I had for them. I tried to explain that to Hailey that we were just pretending but she did not understand. The first scenario is to have one kid take away a toy the first kid had. Hailey had a tiny block with her, so I told her I was going to take it away and then did. She had a complete breakdown. I tried giving it back but she wouldn't have it so I picked her up and set her on my lap to comfort her, to find out a little too late that in the middle of this drama she peed her pants. I was wet, Hailey was wet and still crying. After almost 5 minutes, both situations were taking care of and I finished acting out the scenarios with the puppets.

After that we learned a song and talked about the golden rule which had a flannel board story with it. The story was about a village of 10 little people who were unhappy because no one knew the golden rule. Each person had a negative trait about them that we went over. Then they story ends with a "to be continued" to talk about how things change with the golden rule. Well, because Hailey is so sensitive, she didn't like the story and made her very sad (lucky no tears this time).

Then we talked about manners and had another puppet show. Hailey understands saying please, thank you, and excuse me. Then I was supposed to read "Mind your Manners" by Peggy Perrish but I had a hard time finding any books about manners. Then I found "Say Please" by Kate Tym which is about a bossy friend who never said please or thank you and his other friend always did what was asked of him. Then the tables get switched when the easy-going friend switched homes with his cousin for two weeks and bossed around the original bossy friend. This situation doesn't work in real life. When you get two strong head personalities together, you just get more fighting. The children don't look at the situation and say "oh! I don't like being bossed and maybe I shouldn't do it to others." But oh well.

We finished the lesson by making a kind words booklet.
After Hailey glued in the words she wanted to color. The interesting thing is that she's not coloring the shapes, she is tracing the words.

Then she wanted to write her name on the back. She's been able to make an H for a long time but hasn't done any other letters clearly. So, I wrote a letter at the top one at a time for her to copy.

She did a great job. I could tell what each of her letters were. The Y is at the beginning since she ran out of space but she did an excellent job. I'm so proud and amazed by Hailey.