Kindergarten Lesson on Anger

We'll start a new kindergarten lesson tomorrow that focuses on what to do when we're angry. We'll read the Little Critter book I Was So Mad and sort out helpful and hurtful ways to handle anger. Helpful coping strategies are those that make us feel better without hurting other people or things with our words, hands, or feet. Some ideas we'll talk about are playing outside, playing a game, drawing or coloring, taking slow breaths, getting a cool drink of water, doing jumping jacks until we get tired, squeezing our muscles tight and then loosening them like a cooked spaghetti noodle, etc. Look for your child to bring home a paper with a few more ideas listed on it, and if you would like a list with even more coping strategies, just let me know and I'll send one home with your child.

We'll also use a balloon to talk about how it is easiest to get control of our anger if we start calming down when we're just a tiny bit angry. Once we start getting really angry, it is more difficult to calm ourselves back down. I will blow up the balloon a little bit at a time to represent several different things making us angry over the course of a day... if we don't do anything to relax, pretty soon we have a huge balloon-sized anger inside us! That is when it is easy to lose control and hard to compose ourselves. If we start making an effort to calm down after just one or two angry incidents, it is usually easier to make it through the rest of the day.

The paper your student brings home will also have The Anger Rule on it: It is OK to feel mad, but it is not OK to act bad! I learned that little rhyme at a conference last year. Sometimes kids think that feeling mad equals hurting people or things, that the two are tied together and there are not other choices when we're angry. I will try to convey in the lesson that feeling mad does not automatically mean hurting people or things. It is perfectly OK to feel mad and everyone does at one time or another, but that doesn't mean we get a free pass to be disrespectful or aggressive. We can feel mad and make respectful, assertive choices to feel better instead of acting "bad."

I'll see Galloway, Roberts, Aldridge, Dockery, Siemers, Hester, Tingle, and Miller's classes this week- everyone else will be next week. If you have any questions, just let me know!