It's All About the Content. . .
A summer of writing and revising CPPEV has kept me busy, but with some spare time for travel – I grew up in Monterey and so enjoyed spending some time in Pebble Beach and at the Carmel Bach Festival with my husband! Hope you're having a wonderful summer also!
Some additional writing came my way this summer, as I was invited to write a guest blog for the Zones of Regulation® blog! It’s been a while since I’ve focused on animated videos, and it was a great respite, and I so enjoyed collaborating with Leah, Elizabeth, and Emily – such a terrific team. As part of the article, I compiled a list of Animations for the Zones of Regulation® – it’s in my free resources!
A good animation is so very powerful. And remembering that lots of our students struggle to understand the intention behind social movement, it makes for important therapy material. Not just in helping our students sort out feelings, but learn about them and gain comfort in talking about uncomfortable feelings. Characters like Maca and Roni make it FUN! We all feel annoyed and angry sometimes – even with friends and good classmates. Relating to characters opens the door to our students relating to themselves and each other. Emotions, thoughts, perspective taking – it’s all in there!
Here’s a recent progression of work from a social group earlier this summer. We used Maca and Roni: Jenga to jumpstart our discussions:
1. Maca is worried that Roni will beat him at Jenga… we used the Feelings Tracker and came up with thought bubbles.
2. Students enjoyed putting in contrasting talk bubbles for the 2 characters. It’s clearly a challenging moment for Maca and Roni’s friendship!
3. Our discussion circled back to Maca’s feelings of worry. I asked students to draw some examples from their own lives:
4. We checked out Feeling Fixers to look for positive self-talk that might be helpful for this student (as well as Maca!) Everyone left group feeling a little bit less alone in their worries – and that’s a really good thing!
As you may already know, I find many of the Maca and Roni animations by Kyungmin Woo to be a treasure-trove of material – applicable for social knowledge, feelings, perspective taking, narrative and more!! Is there one that is your go-to favorite? Let’s compile a “Top 5” list to share!
