2025 - Another Good Year of Work Ahead!
Let’s make 2025 a year of growth for ourselves and our students!
January. And a new calendar year. A time to begin fresh, with new ideas and intentions to help us in our lives. Also, the mid-point of the school year. A time to take a deep breath and gear up for the months that will bring us to summer!
In some ways, these 2 ideas are in contrast with each other, and we can struggle to make peace with them. How can we bring new energy and positivity at a time when we can be stressed and tired? How can we start fresh when the challenges of 2024 still surround and, at times, baffle us now in 2025? But perhaps that’s why the new year comes when it does – to give us hope and the resilience to look for the good, search for new options and ideas, and move forward with a refreshed sense of what is possible.
As clinicians, teachers and parents thinking and working with our students in the areas of social cognition and emotional learning, I wholeheartedly believe that, when our sessions and experiences are fun for our students (and ourselves,) greater learning will take place. Most of you know that I find wonderful engaging social learning material in animated videos – while created for entertainment, so many of these stories give us the gift of stories filled with feelings, relationships, and life!
In my presentations over the past 6 months, I have been struck at how so many of you have come to know and love Kyungmin Woo’s animation series Maca and Roni. The videos I share in my presentations are always well-received, in part, because they give us so much fabulous social learning material.
Maca and Roni are such incredibly lovable characters, who show such a broad range of emotions – even without eyebrows! Their adventures make for wonderful narrative work. Their relationship is real – with all its momentary interpersonal glitches, ambivalent feelings (so beautifully portrayed,) and fundamental true caring. Their escapades are eternally entertaining. A parent once asked me “Were these videos made specifically to teach about feelings and social relationships?” No, but they sure work for that!
So, this month, to hopefully help you ease back into work, I thought I’d give you an assortment of examples from Maca and Roni to get your creative juices flowing for your sessions…
1. Helping Maca’s feelings of sadness and discouragement get better with Feeling Fixers. M&R Jenga
2. OK, the flamethrower might not be the BEST idea, but it does represent flexibility…M&R Cleaning
3. Recording contrasting thoughts and feelings. M&R Dominoes
4. Discussing similar gestures with very different intentions. M&R Cleaning
5. Dictated narration emphasizing conjunctions and mental state verbs. M&R Turn off the AC
6. Student sketches of character actions. M&R Turn off the AC
7. A complicated social sequence. M&R Turn off the AC
8. Always on the lookout for portrayals of mental state verbs. M&R Snack Battle
Are you looking for animations to share with your students and would love an easy way to match videos with social concepts? Look no further, grab your digital download of my Maca & Roni Super Social Learning Spreadsheet!
I hope you find time in this season to slow down, rejuvenate, and spend time doing things that bring you joy.
