234. Spice Up Your Social Emotion Literacy Activities
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Speaker 3: Being an SLP is a mission.
Let's discuss topics that matter. What are the game changing strategies? How can we treat the whole child?
How can we create the shiniest versions of ourselves and of our clients? We're here at the drawn board for a reason, you bring your own unique gifts together. Let's create.
Speaker 4: She's a fire she's following.
Today I'm gonna show you a really fun way to integrate social-emotional literacy into your speech therapy sessions or your speech and language groups. This is really gonna help improve the children's social-emotional vocabulary. Now, according to the research, we really wanna [00:01:00] expand that and have the gradations of social-emotional vocabulary so that children are able to precisely identify others' feelings as well as their own.
When we have that, the research suggests you're gonna have better outcomes in terms of social skills, in terms of emotional regulation, in terms of emotional knowledge. So language is a container of thought, and the more words the children can have to express their feelings, the better. So how are we gonna accomplish that?
I'm gonna show you a really cool way to do it. I've done it on my back porch. I've tested out our materials. I'm excited to share these materials in the SIS membership this Friday at the 5:30 AM email. So it's coming on your way. I field tested it. The children loved it. So I know that they're gonna love it on your back porch too, SIS members.
If you're not a SIS membership, I'm still gonna open up the curtains, and I'm not a gatekeeper. I'm gonna tell you exactly what I did so [00:02:00] you can try it on your back porch. So the first thing, this is a six-step process. The first thing I did is I made magnifying glasses that were different colors. So if you're using the zones of regulation, you have four different colors.
If you're using spots for emotion, you have eight different colors. So you have your different colored magnifying glasses, and what they're gonna do later on is they're gonna have a variety of emotions. So you're gonna have those gradations of emotions, so when we're looking at the color blue for sad, we're going to have maybe under that sick, that down feeling, maybe we're gonna have under that tired Bored, those blue feelings that are beyond sad.
You're not sad, you're tired, right? So having those feelings is gonna be really important for children to precisely identify their feelings and others' feelings. So what we're gonna do is we are going to find those, those different emotions, those pictures. They're gonna have the word [00:03:00] on it, they're gonna have the color blue on it, and it's gonna be attached to, this is the best part, an animal, right?
So what kind of animal? What I do is I go to the dollar store, this is an SLP hack for you if you haven't done this already, and I buy from the dog and cat toys different animals. And the reason I do that is 'cause they feel good, they make sound, they're way cooler than the plain old plushy toys, right? So I will go ahead and get 12 of the bears that crinkle and have a squeaky in them.
I'll get 12 of the mice. I'll get 12 birds. I'll get 12 panda bears, 12 skunks, 12 pigs, 12... So you get it, right? And I will go to all of the dollar stores in my area. I'll be like, "Okay, they only have six here." I'll go to the next dollar store. Oh, they got four here. That's 10. Okay, I'm gonna go to the next dollar store.
There's 12. Okay, I have 12 bears now. I have 12 lions now. I have 12 foxes now. [00:04:00] So I go ahead and make collections of these fun, hands-on, cool toys, and I get 12 of them. So I do 12 because I have 12 children in each of my groups, so I have one for each of the child to find their specific emotion, right? So we have 12 kids, they all have their magnifying glasses.
So if you have, if you're using the zones and those four colors, you'll make three sets of them, right? So you have 12. Every child has their own magnifying glass. Every child has their own bear they're gonna find. So last week we went on a bear hike. This next week, for instance, if it's going to be the letter C, we'll go on a cat hike, and they're gonna find different wild cats, right?
And they're gonna have different emotions attached to them, those gradations of emotions. The children are gonna find the emotions, and then they're going to go back to the teacher, stick the sticker on that you have stuck to the animal, and we do that through Velcro. They're gonna stick it on the, the chart from the [00:05:00] teacher.
They found that emotion, and the teacher's gonna re-review the emotion with them, and she's going to use simple call-outs. So you take this complex word such as tired, you know, and what does it feel like when you are tired? That means that you really wish you could go to sleep. You didn't get enough sleep, and sometimes you feel tired if you really wanna go to sleep and take a nap, you know.
You just explain it in plain, plain English, and then you can give an example. I feel tired at night. At nighttime, I just wanna go to sleep. I don't wanna play anymore. I'm too tired. What about you? And you just kinda talk it out with the child. Now, right now that you're giving the child a lot of input, you're giving the child a lot of examples.
They see the picture. They see the word. They see the color. They're getting a lot of input at this stage. Later on in the year, the child's gonna be giving examples when they feel tired. Later on, the child's gonna be using the word tired and coming [00:06:00] up with different emotional vocabulary. But at a starting point, they're just being introduced to these gradations of emotions, and they're getting this hands-on experience of finding the bear that has the tired symbol on that's blue Right?
So as the child's walking around looking for the different bears, you're gonna see a yellow one when you're walking. "Well there, that one's yellow. Now yellow means happy. So, hmm, we're not looking for happy, we're looking for tired. You know, this one says excited. You, you know, we don't feel really excited when we're tired."
You can just talk it out when you find different bears with different feelings. So it's a lot of fun. You get to go outside. You get to go and look under trees and under grass, and it's g- you're gonna have a lot of fun in this kind of big feelings hunt. So the way we sing the song is I put on the PowerPoint, and it's gonna be on the PowerPoint every week, what kind of hunt we're going on, right?
So last week was the letter B. We went on a bear hunt. [00:07:00] So for the bear hunt and the PowerPoint, we're going to say, "We're going on a bear hunt. We're gonna find big feelings." So instead of saying we're gonna find a big one, we say we're gonna find big feelings. So the next week, if we're gonna go on a cat hike, we're gonna say, "We're gonna go on a cat hike.
We're gonna find big feelings." So we're gonna keep doing that. We're not scared. It's the same song. We're just changing the name of the animal. It can be a dinosaur hike. You get it, right? But it keeps it really novel and fun for the children. Then w- after they give the, the sticker to the chart, they're gonna check the checklist too, of course, and check it to completion, the task, with a little marker for the teacher as well And so that is the scavenger hunt, and then they come back in.
Now, this is what you do. This is how you put emotions into practice using universal design for learning in which you're [00:08:00] multi-sensory, multimodal, they're seeing it in print, you've got objects, you're acting it out, you know, you're looking for, you have a purpose, you're, you're going on a scavenger hunt, you're looking for big feelings.
So i- and it's just brings it all to life. It's more than just a chart and, oh, pick, pick a picture and a chart, that means this. So I think you gotta try this on your back porch. It was a total hit with my kiddos, and I'm not looking at it as something that we're one and done. We do one time, okay, we covered it.
Check. We covered our emotions. We did emotion week. This is something we're gonna do every single week. So not only does it give us that improved emotional knowledge that has the improvements in behavior, improvements in self-regulation, improvements in social skills that's associated with it, it also gives us a movement break.
It also gives us a little vitamin N. We get to go outside and take a movement break and then get [00:09:00] back to the challenging treatment targets, which are very important, uh, to create change. You, you, the challenge does create change, but it's nice to have this nice movement break so the kids are 100% ready to learn.
So I want you to do what you do best and roll up your sleeves and to make the world a better place one child at a time. You are always gonna be first. If you're in the SIS membership, you are gonna receive this as a bonus for the month of October, the social emotional learning scavenger hunt, and not only that, you're also going to have the whole, "Hey, how do you feel today?"
emotion chart to check in. That is going to be your October bonus. Both of them have been an absolute hit with, uh, my kiddos on my back porch. I know they're gonna be a hit on your back porch as well. And if you're not a SIS member, try for a month. Join for a month and receive all of the treatment target library the minute you join, and join for a month.
If [00:10:00] you like it, then you stick on. You know, you can tr- you can easily transfer to the annual membership for a discount, or you can simply cancel. And the treatment target library and all of the social emotional literacy bonus for this month is definitely worth $47. You won't be disappointed. So I'll see you there hopefully at the SIS membership, and if not, I'll see you next week.
Thank you so much for being with me. I appreciate you. Bye-bye.
Speaker 5: Yeah. She's Brian shell. She'll get, yeah, she's Brian. [00:11:00] She.
