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WEEKLY AT HOME LEARNING RESOURCES

Week #2: Empathy & Helping Kids Maintain Social Connection During School Closures

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Dear Families,

We hope you and your family are safe and healthy and are finding ways to make the most of this brand new experience. We are all in this together and we are here to help and support you and your family as much as we can during this difficult time. We will keep our websites up to date to provide you resources and tools and some fun activities that will help you with your kids’ social emotional learning needs. You can find our websites here: Mrs. Chapman and Mrs. Fernstrom. Please know that we are also here to help on a more personal level. If there are specific resources that would be helpful to you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to either of us and we will do our best to provide those for you. These can range from behavior changes and challenges you are seeing at home, to food, technology, or other community resources. The best way to reach us for now is by email: chapmanm@issaquah.wednet.edu or fernstromj@issaquah.wednet.edu.

                                                                                             Take care, Maddie and Judith

Mom Reading a Book to her Daughter

Week #2: Empathy

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(a video for an optional activity)

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Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. An important part of that process is first being able to identify what others are feeling. One of our favorite ways to introduce a concept, to make it accessible to students, and to make it easy to talk about, is through read alouds. Below are a few book ideas with links to YouTube videos of people reading the books since it will be super difficult to actually get your hands on these books right now. Then there are some suggestions of ways to make it part of you day and ideas for conversation starting questions. You can also download a word document of this newsletter below.

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Read About It!

Here are some books about empathy. (Click the links for a YouTube video of the book):

by Hannah and Phillip Hoose

by Christopher Silas Neal

by Francesca Sanna

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Practice It!

When you are watching TV or reading books, or even as situations arise at home, ask your child what he/she thinks the characters or their own family members are feeling, and what they might need in that situation.

What could you say or do to help that person?

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Talk About It!

  • What does it mean to be empathetic and why is it important?

  • Is it easy or difficult for you to have empathy for others?

  • Tell me about a time when you were empathetic towards someone else.

  • Tell me about a time when someone else was empathetic towards you.

  • How can you tell how someone else may be feeling?

  • How can you tell what someone else may need?

Extras: 

​You can find a funny Sesame Street video about identifying emotions in others here.

Toys

Week #2: Helping Kids Maintain Social Connection During School Closures

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Social distancing should not mean social isolation.

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Children—especially young children—need quality time with their caregivers and other important people in their lives. Social connectedness improves children’s chances of showing resilience to adversity.

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Idea #1: Arrange video ‘play dates’ (options: FaceTime or Zoom) with your children’s friends or family. You can even make it a surprise call. Give your student three clues as to who it is, and have them try to guess!

  • Option: Weekly themes – ex. Reading theme: kids read their favorite book to each other, act out character voices, and dress up like their favorite character. (For older kids, create a book club ‘meet up’). Lego theme: Have kids bring out their Legos and build together.

 

Idea #2: Have your kids send letters/pictures to family members, friends, neighbors or nursing homes. This is a great opportunity for them to practice writing or typing, and acts of kindness.

  • Make and send personalized gifts - Paintings, decorated boxes, hand-beaded jewelry, pillows, knitted wear, quilts, kids puppets, clothing and fabric, decorated with fabric-markers. Take photos and send these too.

 

Idea #3: Host a virtual game night or dinner with your family friends. Line up a few friends/family members and break out a trivia game or dinner. Make your own food, divide up into teams, and do your best to conquer.

 

Idea #4:Connect with neighbors. Bring lunch or dinner to the bottom of their driveway, porch, deck or other safe distance location and wave to each other.

For additional ideas, click below:

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