Setting boundaries is important in leading a successful and emotionally rewarding life. (HarvardBusinessPublishing) Sometimes, when we feel uncomfortable we instinctively know when our boundaries are crossed. However, both children and adults often have trouble understanding what’s happening on an intellectual level at times when they have that instinctive sense that their boundaries are being crossed. Additionally, children might not always have a clear idea about how to process and respond to uncomfortable situations that result from violations of their sense of autonomy, however large or small those experiences are. (GSE)
A well-rounded education built with social-emotional learning can include learning opportunities that help children with boundaries. In order to develop into confident and well-rounded members of society, children need to learn how to define their boundaries, and subsequently, how to maintain those boundaries.
In order to create activities that incorporate teaching boundaries, it’s important to first define boundaries. Once you define these boundaries it also gives children an idea of different kinds of boundaries that need to be respected.
Here’s a brief overview of the seven (7) types of boundaries:
Seven Types of Boundaries
1. Physical Boundaries
People generally require physical boundaries in order to maintain a basic sense of safety. Everyone has different thresholds and triggers that give them a sense that their physical boundaries are not respected. Some examples include:
Unwelcome touching of any kind
How close a person is to their personal space (for example someone might be standing too close)
Sanctity of their things–is their lunch, school supplies, jacket, etc., respected?
It is important to recognize that different kids have different levels of comfort with physical boundaries. Some might need you to stand further away. Some don’t mind if their classmates touch their backpacks. Some kids love hugs and others don’t like to be touched at all. With this You Belong poster, kids come into the classroom in a line and touch the symbol of what they prefer – a hug, a high five, a handshake, or a fist bump.
Children need to be aware of what their preferences are when it comes to their physical boundaries. Then they can be encouraged to vocalize those boundaries.
2. Emotional and Mental Boundaries
Children might not always recognize that their emotional and mental boundaries aren’t being respected because they haven’t yet developed the tools to recognize and articulate their feelings about what makes them emotionally and mentally uncomfortable. Therefore, with younger kids, especially, look for clues like:
If the child has trouble talking about a particular subject
If the child is showing signs of embarrassment
These kinds of signs can mean the child is sensing that someone has crossed their mental or emotional boundaries.
3. Spiritual or Religious Boundaries
This is sometimes a challenging subject to approach in a classroom setting, but it might come up. Classrooms are full of kids with many different backgrounds. Educators will have to prepare themselves to moderate situations arising from a need for spiritual and religious boundaries.
4. Time Boundaries
School is an ideal learning environment to help children figure out how to create and defend their schedules. Adults, more than children, tend to have trouble setting boundaries with their time. Therefore, it’s valuable for children to learn how to recognize when people are taking advantage of their time so they can set boundaries in adulthood. For example, when a student is trying to complete an assignment and someone is distracting them, they can learn to say, “I’ll talk to you later. I need to do my work right now.”
5. Financial and Material Boundaries
Children won’t need to worry about placing boundaries around finances in elementary school. Financial boundaries have more to do with adulthood. However, class stores and using play money can be introduced in elementary school to help them become aware of financial priorities.
6. Sexual Boundaries
It is never too early for children to develop an understanding of having and respecting bodily boundaries. While the youngest grades might not be the ideal environment for conversations about sexual boundaries, it is an ideal environment to start talking about respecting the physical comfort and safety of themselves and other people.
7. Non-negotiable Boundaries
Boundaries are about safety and comfort. Therefore, violation of those boundaries can seriously compromise a person’s sense of well-being. Because every child comes from a different background, every child will have unique ideas and situations that will inform personal non-negotiable boundaries. Both parents and educators can help children figure out those boundaries.
Boundaries for Kids
Kids will test boundaries. They will test their own boundaries, trying things to see how uncomfortable those things leave them. Their peers will have boundaries, and kids will test those, figuring out how the community will react to them. Teachers and parents will set boundaries, and kids will push against those boundaries to figure out how far they can be pushed. It’s not only natural to do it, but kids will learn a lot about how boundaries work by checking out how pliable the boundaries around them are. (UsableKnowledge)
As a result, one effective way to teach boundaries in a safe way is through demonstration. (ChildMindInstitute) Boundaries correlate with responding to actions, feelings, and social interactions. Therefore, children will look to their peers and the important adults in their lives to learn how to create appropriate boundaries.
Teaching Boundaries Activities
Here are a few suggestions for creating activities that will create more intentional learning experiences for children:
Board games and yard games. These are great ways to simulate life’s boundaries. Talk about why the rules are important. What happens when a rule is broken? etc.
Class discussions. Moderated conversations about the different types of boundaries help relate abstract ideas to experiences.
Role-playing. Children learn a lot from acting out complex scenarios. (HowtoAdult)
Value assessment. When children have to articulate what they find important they will also start thinking about protecting those values.
Reading with subsequent guided conversation.
Soul Shoppe encourages building healthy boundaries in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe provides tools to help teachers and parents teach social emotional skills to children. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
If children leave school with a belief in their ability to successfully set then accomplish their goals, then their education has helped boost them towards success. Creating lessons that teach self-efficacy in the classroom can be some of the most valuable lessons that educators can provide. (GSE) We have created a guide for self-efficacy in teaching for elementary students.
Self-Efficacy in Teaching
Teaching self-efficacy in the classroom means showing students how to plan their actions while feeling confident in their ability to carry out their plans. (SERC) Using engaging tactics will reinforce a sense of self-determination and personal effectiveness.
Here are some things to consider when setting out to incorporate self-efficacy into a teaching curriculum. (TheEducationHub)
1. Create Opportunities that Capitalize on Successes
Few moments reinforce confidence like experiencing successes. Often children, because of fewer experiences in their lives, haven’t yet experienced as many independent successes. Therefore, beginning a habit of believing that they can succeed is a valuable lesson.
Practicing extra gestures of positive reinforcement for both minor and major achievements is a great opportunity to improve self-efficacy. (TeachStart) For example:
Send children a letter or postcard praising them for their achievement.
Create an award where students can nominate each other for achievements they recognize.
Designate an achievement wall, where students can display their achievements for the class.
Creating a positive reinforcement feedback system goes a long way toward teaching children to believe in themselves.
2. Peer Modeling
Peer modeling is the practice of recognizing students who will step forward to provide clarity in classroom dialogue. Students who are asked to rise to the challenge may be viewed by their peers as someone to trust to have the right answers on a given subject. This can bolster a child’s confidence. Encouraging peer modeling in the classroom is a great tactic in building self-efficacy. This process must be approached carefully, but if done well it can be an effective aid to self-efficacy in education.
3. Goals and Feedback
Setting goals is a key skill. Implementing exercises where students have to set goals, follow through with them, and deal with windfalls and setbacks will give them a valuable skill to carry forward into the rest of their lives.
Educators should help students set and keep goals, and at the same time they should create feedback opportunities so that students can learn how to assess their plans. Additionally, this will help them learn how to make adjustments to goals where necessary.
Goal-setting journals, worksheets, visual boards, and goal-tracking sheets are all helpful tools. Read more about goal-setting for studentshere.
4. Self-Assessment
The practice of self-assessment isn’t always used in curricula driven by test scores and grades. If children are encouraged through classroom activities to develop a practice of self-assessment, asking themselves to make critical appraisals of the quality of their own work, it will serve them well for the rest of their lives. Using self-assessment sheets that are reviewed, or even simply put into an anonymous dropbox, can help students learn how to assess themselves on a given task. Self-assessment is a powerful tool in self-efficacy teaching.
5. Create Problem Solving Opportunities
Perhaps the single most effective skill any educator can impart to their students is the ability to problem solve. When students are empowered to approach every experience in life with a problem-solving mindset, they will be prepared to cope with many of the puzzles life throws their way.
An example of a problem-solving activity is the pyramid activity. (Wrike) Arrange students into groups and have them form a pyramid. Tell them they can only move two people but must reverse the pyramid.
6. Support Affirmation
A student’s self-confidence is affected by more than academic achievement. Since children spend a lot of time in school or engaging in school-related activities, it’s important for educators to help their students learn self-affirmations, as they pertain to parts of their personality other than academic achievement. Their social skills, hobbies like juggling or origami, their creative skills, or even their skills in being a good helper, are all examples. Self-affirmation is a large part of self-efficacy.
Teachers Teaching Self-Efficacy to Themselves
Kids learn a lot by example. Children are watching us all the time, and one of the most effective ways to teach them social and emotional learning skills is by living the lessons we wish to teach.
Educators who demonstrate self-efficacy will teach self-efficacy.
The classroom is a place that impacts a child’s social development greatly. Including friendship group activities in classroom curriculum can have a significant, positive impact on a child’s social emotional development.
Friendship group activities for elementary students, whatever form they take, can create positive associations between happiness and community engagement. (Harvard) These activities also promote important lifelong skills of cooperation, empathy, and respect.
Friendship Group Activities
We’ve provided a few friendship activity ideas below. They range in complexity between activities that only need a few minutes of prep and no supplies, to activities that require a longer timeline and need a few items. It would make sense to incorporate a handful of friendship group activities into classroom curriculum throughout the academic year.
The Greeting Game
Supplies:
None.
How to do it:
This game is good for the beginning of the school year when everyone is still learning names. The students take turns saying, “Hello, [name]” to everyone in the classroom. The student who remembers the most names without stumbling wins a small prize.
Why it’s a good idea:
For a lot of children, one of the most intimidating things they will face is starting a conversation with strangers. (Wired) Helping children create positive emotional associations with saying “hello” to people is a valuable skill they can carry throughout the rest of their lives. It will help them to get past nerves that come with meeting new people.
Group Art Activities
Supplies:
Paints, sidewalk chalk, crayons, or other art supplies, and a big surface that children can work on together.
How to do it:
Suggest a theme–birthdays, space, friendship, etc. Children will create a big mural on that subject.
Why it’s a good idea:
There are a lot of reasons creative group activities foster a sense of community. (HarvardGSE) Students have the opportunity to plan together, to see how other students solve problems, and to share in contributing to something they can all feel excited about. A shared sense of accomplishment is impactful.
Group Storytelling Activities
Supplies:
Notebooks, whiteboards, computers, or anything else where children can record the events of the story.
How to do it:
Start with a prompt. Either ask for volunteers or call on students to contribute a sentence or event to a story. Work together to build a cohesive story. Ensure that every student gets a chance to contribute.
Why it’s a good idea:
The stories that we tell hold our communities together. (Ed) When children cooperate to create a story, it promotes a sense of accomplishment and community. Because every child in the classroom gets a chance to contribute, every child receives the opportunity to feel a sense of personal accomplishment, as well as an opportunity to hear the ideas of their classmates. This activity also provides a give and take structure which is important in social interactions.
Blindfolded Obstacle Course
Supplies:
Blindfold.
How to do it:
First, have the children rearrange the furniture in the classroom into an obstacle course. Next, children will take turns putting on the blindfold and navigating the obstacle course. All the other students in the classroom call out instructions to the blindfolded child to help them get through the obstacle course. Take turns with different students and rearrange the course each time.
Why it’s a good idea:
Learning trust, earning it, and instilling it in other people, is one of the most important emotional learning skills a child can develop. (Visibly) An activity where students have to help each other out and trust that the help they are receiving will provide a positive outcome provides a chance to create strong social bonds.
Finding Things in Common
Supplies:
None, or create a bingo card.
How to do it:
Organize students into small groups. Children sit down with their groups and find out things they have in common (e.g. like pizza, have a brother, love dogs). Make it a game by setting a certain number of things in common they need to find. Whichever small group finds that number of things in common first wins a prize.
Why it’s a good idea:
Finding common ground with others is an essential part of developing strong social bonds. (Gazette) A friendship group activity that encourages kids to learn more about each other is a great way to learn how to make friends in and out of the classroom.
Friendship Social Skills Group Activities
Educators who need assistance in developing friendship group activities for their students or other social emotional activities can receive help through Soul Shoppe. Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs, online or in-person, for children and educators. Soul Shoppe strategies encourage children to build community and meaningful relationships with their peers. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe focuses the discussion on social skills and emotional learning. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools, homeschool social emotional electives, or our parent support programs.
In a turbulent world where stressors are abundant, (Harvard) providing students with sufficient anxiety coping skills is important. Stress has consistent mental and physical effects on one’s health. The classroom is one place where children can learn skills to cope with stress.
Anxiety Coping Skills for Kids in the Classroom
Creating classroom-appropriate coping skills activities for kids requires an imaginative approach. In principle, everyone needs to practice calming techniques to deal with stress. In practice, children are more likely to remember anxiety coping strategies when they’re incorporated into interactive activities.
Creating coping strategies for students requires a dual-pronged approach. On the one hand, it means creating activities with a foundation on the causes of stress and anxiety. On the other hand, every classroom is different, with different challenges and resources. Therefore, different stressors drive each student’s anxiety and may need to be addressed separately.
Here’s a quick rundown of stress and anxiety coping strategies to help educators teach activities around anxiety coping skills for kids.
Anxiety Coping Strategies
Stress and anxiety shadow the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans. Children are no exception. Stressors that cause anxiety are on the rise, and the prevalence of younger children dealing with them is also increasing. (HarvardGSE)
Recent studies were conducted on the most effective techniques for coping with stress and anxiety. It was found that coping with anxiety should be based on executive function through self-regulation (HarvardCDC).
In the context of teaching coping strategies to kids, this refers to a practice of cultivating the foundational mental capacities for active self-regulation. These are skills fundamental to a child’s development.
Cultivating executive function through self-regulation prepares children for success in life. There are technical bases for practicing executive function. (HarvardCDC) Put into usable terms, these bases are:
Working memory. Thisincludesthe capacity to retain information learned from experiences and lessons. In this context, manipulation refers to an ability to examine the information from different perspectives, to synthesize the information with other information to come to new conclusions, and other mental practices useful for problem-solving.
Mental flexibility. Thisrefers to the ability to adapt to new circumstances. For children, a lot of their experiences are new experiences. Fortunately for them, children tend to have good mental flexibility. That’s why early childhood is such an opportune time to design activities to encourage children to cope with stress.
Self-control. In the long run, self-control will be one of the most important fundamental skills children will need to practice to help them cope with anxiety. Self-control involves self-reflection on the part of children, as well as active decision-making regarding their behavior. Educators can create coping skills activities that cultivate opportunities for kids to practice self-control.
These processes for cultivating executive function through self-regulation will build strong foundations for developing coping skills activities.
Coping Skills Activities for Kids
There are many potential coping skills activities for kids that educators can add to their curricula. Educators should bear in mind the foundations of anxiety coping strategies when developing classroom activities, and at the same time adapt any activities to the students in their individual classrooms.
Here are a few suggestions for activities that have proven effective in teaching anxiety coping strategies. Educators can start with this list and then develop their own activities from there (Pathway):
Schedule daily emotional check-ins. These check-ins create the chance for students to practice self-reflection and self-awareness.
Have children make something creative that shows them messiness is okay. Painting, coloring, or clay gives children something to focus on and control, helping them practice spatial reasoning, working memory, and active mental flexibility.
Gratitude journaling/compliment list helps with positive thinking and reflection. This activity helps children cultivate a practice for seeing scenarios from calmer and more down to earth perspectives, helping them with working memory and self control.
Practice deep breathing. This go-to strategy is important when coping with anxiety. A wide body of research has substantiated the benefits, both mental and physical, of deep breathing. (Routledge) At Soul Shoppe, we use the Stop and Breathe Technique. This is a valuable anxiety coping strategy that any educator can incorporate into their curriculum.
Encourage children to read books that are age-appropriate with themes of stress and anxiety. Reading is a great way for students to see anxiety coping skills for kids in action through the stories of others. Dissect and discuss these stories to encourage deeper thinking.
Childhood is an incredibly precious and precarious time in one’s emotional development. According to Rasmussen University, this development process can be characterized by three stages: noticing emotions, expressing emotions, and managing emotions.
The journey of managing the overwhelming emotions of childhood isn’t always an easy one, let alone a straightforward one. In fact, the process can become especially challenging to handle when implementing tools on anger management for kids.
If you want to know how to help your children with anger management, whether inside or outside of the classroom, here’s how you can respond to that anger within a compassionate, empathy-focused framework.
Anger Management for Kids
Anger Management in the Classroom
The classroom is a great source of togetherness and community as children learn alongside their peers and come to form their first friendships—bonds that could potentially last a lifetime. However, typical school stressors, from bullying to challenging work, can also turn the classroom into a source of tension.
Even older children encounter challenges with regulating and controlling their emotions in the classroom. In a study conducted a decade ago, nearly 1 in 12 American adolescents (nearly 6 million people) were found to exhibit traits of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), a condition characterized by uncontrollable, particularly volatile outbursts of anger. (Harvard Medical School)
Anger often stems from intense feelings of being provoked, hurt, or wronged. Since it takes children some time to fully and properly discern the differences between right from wrong, it also takes them some time to formulate proper responses and strategies to cope with feeling wronged.
This is where effective, empathy-focused education plays a crucial role in demonstrating healthy examples of anger management for kids. Even planting a few positive seeds now can prove vital for promoting positive growth long into the future. One great strategy for cultivating these positive seeds could involve teachers facilitating group activities for anger management. Here’s what that would entail.
Group Activities for Anger Management
Group activities and games offer a myriad of insightful, fun opportunities for young students to learn the fundamentals of cooperation. These activities not only help with anger management in the classroom, but healthy emotional management at large.
As an educator, there are a number of creative group activities for anger management you could consider incorporating into your classroom. We hope these suggestions will help spark some inspiration.
Below are some popular group activities for anger management worth some consideration:
Art Therapy: Drawing, painting, sculpting, and sketching all offer ways for children to let their expressive creative abilities flourish, and in turn, creatively visualize their feelings. Art therapy has been shown to effectively work with 68% of children. (Frontiers In Psychology)
Role Play: Acting, charades, and puppet shows are all excellent options for children to externalize their emotions in safe, controlled environments. Rather than yelling or fighting, role-playing offers students a fun, healthy outlet to voice their anger.
Anger Worksheets: Getting kids to express, process, and challenge angry thoughts through creative writing prompts and in-depth worksheets can offer an invaluable resource and means of therapeutic expression. You can find many printable anger management worksheets on the web.
Mindfulness Exercises: Breathing exercises are a remarkably effective lesson to impart on students if you’d like to teach them how to better regulate their emotions. During break time, consider facilitating group meditations or breathing exercises, encouraging students to mindfully reflect on their emotions. Learn the Stop and Breathe technique from Soul Shoppe here.
Board Games: Group-focused board games promote the ideals of collaboration, working together, and hashing out conflict.
Safe Learning Environments: A safe learning environment is a calmer, happier one, where students are encouraged to implement research-backed conflict resolution techniques. You can find conflict resolution activities for kidshere. Additionally, Soul Shoppe provides a peace path to help students learn how to work out their conflict and emotions in a healthy way.
These group activities can provide positive emotional benefits as kids learn to navigate challenging emotions in a safe environment.
But what if all else fails, and little Timmy’s still having trouble controlling his temper? Here are some key steps to keep in mind while trying to manage a child’s anger.
How To Handle An Angry Aggressive Child
Talk Calmly: A parent or authority figure may feel tempted to meet a child’s anger with anger of their own, by yelling back at them. This will likely exacerbate the child’s emotional tension even further. A quiet voice is a great tool to help minimize tension.
Stay Present: While you shouldn’t meet anger with retaliatory yelling, you also shouldn’t capitulate to the child’s anger. Be firm, resolute, composed, and try to teach the child a more peaceful means of conflict resolution after they calm down.
Discipline Appropriately: You can discipline the child with appropriate consequences when they choose bad behavior. However, you should not use overly harsh punishments. Disproportionate punishments will only make the child more angry. Instead, once the child is calm, talk about why they received the punishment they did and how it related to their choices in the given situation. It’s important that they understand cause and effect.
Stay Connected: Connection is extremely important in a child’s life. Help encourage connection through social emotional learning programs. Validate their emotions and teach them how to channel them in a better way.
Anger management and emotional development is a lifelong journey, not only for kids, but well into adulthood. For roughly two decades, Soul Shoppe’s helped thousands of children find their first steps in that journey. We connect with over 60,000 children each year, teaching them new empathy-based approaches to conflict resolution and emotional regulation.
Our SEL programs for elementary schools have yielded proven results in helping teachers and parents teach emotional regulation. Contact us today if you’d like to learn more about our innovative social-emotional learning programs!
Making judgment calls as a well-adjusted person of any age requires complicated assessments of the pros and cons behind each choice. It is a process largely informed by life experiences, risk assessments, and desires. In order to create the best possible outcome for children to lead rewarding, successful lives, it’s important to provide them with opportunities to develop strong decision-making skills.
Teaching Decision-Making Skills
Activities that encourage students to practice decision-making should supplement the rest of their education since decision-making skills are part of everyday life. (Harvard). Therefore, decision-making activities for students will constitute an important part of any social-emotional learning curriculum. Activities that encourage students to learn decision-making skills don’t need to be bland. You can even incorporate them into fun games.
Teaching decision-making skills to students will help them navigate challenging opportunities independently in the future. Educators will find it valuable to tailor their teaching activities to their specific students. Here are some ideas to start the process.
Decision-Making Activities for Students
Providing students with opportunities to learn decision-making skills will help with everything else in the classroom. Many decision-making activities for students involve opportunities to learn other important life skills since decision-making is a feature of many experiences. When students improve their decision-making abilities, they are essentially improving their own agency.
Let’s explore some activities that encourage students to practice decision-making skills. They might look like activities with other purposes, but they include valuable tools for students to practice making decisions.
Board Games
Board games are perfect tools for practicing decision-making skills. The more complicated the game, the better. With rules to remember and objectives to plan for, it’s almost like board games were designed as decision-making laboratories. They randomly generate scenarios where children have to weigh options and plan ahead within a set of designated parameters.
Board games are like miniaturized life experiences, including opportunities to make cost-benefit analyses. In board games, children are also faced with decisions concerning each others’ feelings and determinations.
An additional way of using board games to create decision-making opportunities is by asking students to play them in teams. If they play team-focused board games, they are faced with further opportunities to make decisions about cooperation, team building, and how to operate in a community.
Outdoor Games
A surefire way of encouraging children to learn anything is getting them to move around and learn actively. Outdoor games of any kind rest on twin foundations of rules and goals. A structured environment with risks and rewards gives children ample opportunity to practice decision-making.
Team activities, such as kickball or capture the flag, help students practice rapid decision-making while teaching them to see how they affect their group in real-time. Other activities, like Simon Says or Hide-and-Seek, provide opportunities for children to practice some self-aware decision-making, improving their sense of individuality.
Role Playing
Dramatic plays or other role-playing activities are great decision-making learning tools. Even if the role-play scenario is scripted, children are still getting an opportunity to practice imagining the world around them from a perspective beyond their own. Furthermore, whether the situation is scripted or not, students get to imagine the result of decisions they might not make otherwise. Students can even create their own role-playing scenarios with prompts.
Reading
The ultimate tool for engaging a student’s imagination is reading. Books are a perfect tool for students to see decisions play out, good or bad, as well as their consequences. Through the insights of literature, students will be able to have conversations about how and why someone might make certain decisions. As an educator, you can bring decision-making questions to the forefront of discussion.
Friendly Debate
In a moderated setting, debating different perspectives creates chances for students to think critically about the strengths and weaknesses of different courses of action. Students can articulate their own views on a given subject, and evaluate reasons against that view with moderation. This exercise helps students practice weighing the costs and benefits of decisions.
Decision-Making Skills in the Classroom
Creating tools for students to practice making decisions is important. Educators should build intentional environments where their students can hone their decision-making skills in safety. Then they can impress upon students that these skills practiced through games or activities can be implemented outside of the classroom too.
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