Create me a Story
Creating stories helps to build your brain in many ways. Understanding how stories are put together helps you with learning to read and remembering information in the long term. Coming up with new stories helps to build the part of your brain that imagines pictures in your head while listening.
Everytime you imagine what you read, or hear, you make your brain smarter. This helps you learn so many new things here at school and everywhere!
Gather some pencils crayons and paper and watch the video linked here to find out how to Create a story to share with a family member.
Marker Chase
Use markers and some paper around the house to provide a quick connection between parents and their children.
Activity adapted from Art Therapy for Kids by Erica Curtis, LMFT, ATR-BC
Making connections with our kids can be hard when we are working and they are home for the summer. It can be difficult to sync up our schedules for when kids and their caregivers need a little extra connection. This activity is designed to reconnect in small amounts of available time.
Materials needed: something to color with (Markers, colored pencils or crayons); drawing paper (in a pinch the inside of wrapping paper works great or a flattened paper bag—especially with crayons)
Each person completing the actvity chooses a color.
Give out these instructions to your child: “You can move your marker around the paper however you want. My job in this round is to follow right behind my marker, tracing your work.
Let your child (children) draw for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, switch roles. You can experiment by speeding up and slowing down the activity. If you have more than one child make it a family activity and go in rounds.
When you feel like your child is done—or the paper is filled up, :); discuss how well you both paid attention to each other.
Additional challenge, have your child think creatively to turn your squiggles into an abstract art piece with the rest of the markers/pencils/etc. Ask them to bring it to you when they are done and discuss all the details they have added to the picture.
Ask them to tell you a story about the images or colors they used in the picture. If they are having trouble with telling you simply notice different parts o the artwork together such as: “I see you used a lot of gree here.” Sometimes that can help prompt a discussion.” Have fun marker chasing!
This activity is adapted from Art Therapy for Kids, by Erica Curtis, LMFT
Summer Coping Activities
Check back weekly for new coping skills. This summer I will be posting activities that students can complete either by themselves or with a partner. Enjoy!
Each activity is focused on self development and helping students build key skills they can use when they are feeling overwhelmed or other strong feelings.
My goal is to post an activity that our students can do at home here at least weekly. These activities are aimed at practicing and understanding coping skills from an elementary perspective. The whole family can do them if they would like. I am so excited to try something new!
Take care,
Mrs. T