I hope you all had a nice weekend--it was beautiful out!
We had a busy week last week with Valentine's Day and a half day of school. We spent a lot of the week reviewing Social Filter. Some people ask me why we cover the same topics each year and this was a perfect example. We have taught Social Filter for several years (at least 2) and each year, we've done a visual with a filter and marbles and water. None of the students could remember the visual or the concept without a lot of reteaching and prompting. So that's why we revisit important topics! :)
A social filter is an imaginary thing in people's brains that help them decide what to say (in our speech bubble) and what should get filtered out and stay in our thoughts (in our thought bubble). We talked about concepts related to Valentine's Day that we should say or think. The older kids came up with a good list. We discussed the social issues associated with telling our peers and friends "I love you" vs. saying that our families. We also had fun making some Valentine's crafts, working on our joke telling and game playing and learning about the word "melancholy" (one of my favorites!)
The joke this week was: "Where did the pencil go on vacation?
Pencil-vania!" (Thank you Cade!)
Our word of the week was "melancholy". The children added it to their social skills notebooks under "sad". If you hear your child using this word, be sure to high-five them!