Mmm...pretzels

Whew! Another year ahead of me. Some kids are those from last year, some are new faces, and some moved up from the younger class. We definitely have a wide variety of learners. I'm focusing on executive functions and social skills these first few weeks, specifically calm-down strategies. I got some great activities from Conscious Discipline, so we went ahead and tried out some of the breathing strategies. So far, success has been mixed. One child did quite well with it; when he was mad, I prompted him to "do the pretzel" and he did. Another child was walked over to the calm-down center this morning and asked which strategy he wanted to use: star, drain, balloon, or pretzel. I pointed to each one saying, "Do you want to do this one?" When we got to the pretzel, he smiled happily and held out his hand! I can't say I blame him; food calms me down, too. It's going to be a very interesting year, I can tell.