Insightful Kids

04/09/2021

In today’s lesson of Social skills Development, I guided the children to experience “Democratic Election”.

Task: to decide a mascot, a name and a colour for the group of friendship.
�They followed the steps:
* Choose one for themselves;
* Discover other’s choice;
* Tell the class of their own choice and reasons, meanwhile try to convince others to change their decision;
* Take time to reconsider their choice and make a change if needed;
* Vote;
* Count;
* Finalise the result.

During the process, the children practiced public speaking, persuasive speaking, active listening, communicating, taking turns, maintaining patience, and most importantly experiencing and digesting the minor disappointent they might have felt when their preferences were not selected. ��Although their speeches was still very shot, some of them might still be hesitate to speak to the group, their reasons were simple, reminding of active listening was still required from time to time. They enjoyed the first experience of deciding something among a group in a democratic way 😀

14/08/2021

A few terms of my Social Skills Development course has passed. My boy has finally agreed to be my student. 😀 As a mother, I am very happy to see his improvement with social interaction with unfamiliar peers. 👍
Today’s topic is Fair Play is Fun Play. ( following the Olympics , I suppose 😉)
Winning or losing doesn’t really matter. What matters is how you behave after winning or losing.
Social manners!

03/08/2021

Once again my course was moved from classroom to zoom.
Lots of modification and creation work within a short period of time.
What can I say…… only until you face such ever-changing uncertainty did you realize the importance of one’s adaptability, ability of learn and resilience. I am trying !!! 💪💪💪😂😂

03/07/2021

On last Wednesday I made a decision to bring my course online for today just in case the lockdown had to be extended to Sat.
And this is my first experience of teaching online.
A very steep learning curve but I made it!
A lot to review and lots to improve ✊

22/06/2021

I have to say that I am a big fan of him. And I believe that if our kids can learn it when they are kids, their future will be great!

72329 signatures are still needed! It’s time to kick the banks out of schools, and teach kids real money skills!

09/06/2021

In last week's lesson, I introduced a strategy call Traffic Light to the children.

I did two Puppet Play Shows.

Show 1: two puppets decide to colour.
Puppet A gets the crayons and picks the nicest colours, saying: “I need the blue, red, green, and yellow crayons, because I am going to make a beautiful rainbow. You can have the black and white crayons.”
Puppet B complains: “Hey, that’s not fair. I don’t even want to be your friend anymore. I’m going home.”

Show 2:
Puppet C set the scene: “I got all my cars out. I set up a car track and some blocks to make a city. It was really neat.”
Puppet D (visits Puppet C): requests the opportunity to play several times, But puppet C asks D to wait each time. After making three polite requests, puppet D grabs a couple of cars. Puppet C is upset: “Hey, stop it! Those are my cars. You can’t take them. Give them back!”

The children noticed the problems in the two shows: not sharing, grabbing toys, keeping friends waiting too long, getting upset easily.

I asked the children to show Puppet B and D the Traffic Light strategy. They were really good at applying the steps to Puppets when the latter were very upset and couldn’t control their emotion.

Through this activity, the children practice when they face a friendship problem, they firstly need to calm down by Taking 5, which is deep breath in-and-out 5 times;

When they are calmer, they tell their friends:
1) what the problem is (we did lots of exercise in previous weeks around specially picked vocabularies by ICPS founder Dr. Myrna Shure)to develop children’s skills of identifying real problems);
2)how they feel (identifying own feeling and others’ feelings are essential part of ICPS methodology, which were taught to children in previous lessons)

Then I asked the children to take time (Yellow Light - slow down) to come up with ideas/words for Puppet B and D to do or say to A and B, which not only wouldn’t upset either themselves or the others, but also get to play crayons, and cars.

The children, as the observers of shows rather than insiders, were more able to generate ideas.



In the next couple of weeks, we will further explore and evaluate those ideas by looking at their consequences (the next stage after generating alternative solutions in ICPS methodology.

We will also play games to practice listening skills.

09/06/2021

It's been a while since I last posted about I Can Problem Solve course I have been doing.
I definitely didn't stop. Instead, I have been upgrading the curriculum and delivering the course over Term 2 every Saturday.

09/06/2021

I highly recommended the book Investor for Family if you want to teach your kid the life skill of managing finance.
My son has been doing three jobs around house weekly since March and he puts what he earns into the three compartments. He is always keen to tick the box once he has done one job. And he knows Sunday night is Pay time.
Also you might want to get th book “The Dog called Money” for your kids as well as you. A book is very cleverly written by a German Bodo Schafer.
Only thing is I couldn’t find its English version anyway online.

06/04/2021

Our 10 weeks ICPS Social Skills Course has come to the end for this term.
The kids teamed up for a group project - Making a Parachute 🪂 which tested their learning of this course that targets interpersonal problem solving skills. They argued, negotiated, compromised, helped with each other. They also tried asking me for help as an alternative solution.

Parents were invited in to the class and role played with me to show their learning from this course in front of their children.

Everybody was proud to receive a certificate of accomplishment and ready to continue their journey with their parents towards becoming a problem solving expert in future. 😀

29/03/2021

One of the key notes in Problem Solving is to identify real problem.
Something very relevant to this point happened today, which I wanted to share with you.
We were in a park before lockdown today. He started with flying paper plane and I began with playing bubbles. Later we swapped. After a while ( I was a bit bored of flying paper planes, I supposed), I asked to swap again. 😂 He refused and told me he didn’t want to fly plane anymore. I tried a few “ICPS tricks” to convince him to accept my suggestion but failed. And I was a bit frustrated, I had to say. (I admit that as a mother of one child, I often acted as his sibling , on purpose or naturally :D)
But very soon, I realized I might not have got the real issue right! “I see. You don’t want to fly paper plane anymore but we both can play bubbles , right? “ This time, he didn’t say no.
A few mins before 5pm lockdown, we quickly agreed on a rule of taking turns. He was very happy with that because he had the bubble at hands so he didn’t need to wait. As his mother, I was very happy to wait 😀
In short, when we help kids solve their own interpersonal problem ( any problem, really) or when we solve our problem with kids, try your best to stay calm to be able to discover the real story ( what is the other person’s real opinion or reason? )

24/03/2021

While my ICPS Social Skills Development course is in progress, I have been receiving feedbacks from the parents. I just wish it could be in English so that I didn’t have to translate. But I promise you it’s all true! :D

In my current class a 6-7 years old girl C was a bit of headache for her mother. C as an older sister, always fought for attention from her parents against her younger sister. Because C always tended to enjoy the attention and recognition from adults she actually was not able to think about things with calm and clear mind. Her mum enrolled her in my class.

While C was in the class I noticed she often had raised hands without even hearing my questions because apparently she needed my attention and recognition. Regardless though, C has been practising all my games and exercise around those vocabularies, identifying feelings and recently finding solutions to problems.

Her mum couldn’t help but telling me her recent “surprise”

After playing together C and her younger sister Y were collecting the toys. Y was wearing one rollerblade while doing it. C thought that wasn’t fair because Y still was playing. C told Y to take it off in an ordering tune. C always yelled at Y as she used to. Neither worked. C came for her mum’s help. The mum knew what she learned in our course therefore she reminded C of the strategies of it. Being quiet for a little while, C went to Y again and said: “sister, you played with me before but now you didn’t collect the toys with me. Is it fair to me? What do you think I am feeling now?” Mum noticed that C‘s voice sounded in great empathy. This time Y didn’t argue but just said nothing. C then went to take out another rollerblade and told Y: what about you put this one on as well and we then collect the toy together? “ “Sure!” Y replied with excitement :D

Would this kind of “harmony” stay with them forever from now on? Probably not. Are the kids and the parents on the right direction towards developing a harmonious family relationship? Definitely!
More importantly, C, and as well as her little sister, will more than likely benefit from these practices in childhood when they enter their adulthood.

24/03/2021

While I am researching on finance literature for kids, I thought this is definitely worth sharing with parents and any individuals here.
https://www.facebook.com/MoneySmartAu/

Helping Australians take control of their money with free tools and tips.