Dear Families,
Last month, our school counseling lessons focused on self-regulation: learning how to manage our attention, emotions, bodies, and behaviors, and gradually becoming more independent in making good choices.
We started by talking about some familiar experiences. I asked students:
- “Who has ever been told to brush your teeth?”
- “Who has ever been told it’s time to go to bed?”
- “Who has ever been told to turn off YouTube?”
Almost every hand in the room went up. We then talked about how, as we grow, we gradually become more responsible for making these decisions ourselves. When we are little, our grown-ups are often the ones telling us what to do. As we get older, we become more capable of being self-managers. That growing ability to manage ourselves is self-regulation.
One way children can practice self-regulation is through games and activities that require us to listen, pay attention, follow a sequence, control our bodies, and adjust when something doesn't go as expected.
To practice these skills, we spent some time learning and playing hand-clapping games together. Every class started with "Pat-a-Cake," which is often one of the first hand-clapping games children learn. Although it may seem simple, games like Pat-a-Cake give children opportunities to practice hand-eye coordination, attention, timing, taking turns, following a predictable sequence, and regulating their bodies.
Since our students are definitely not babies anymore, we then challenged ourselves with some new and more complicated hand-clapping games! Depending on the class, we practiced: Mary Mack, A Sailor Went to Sea and Down Down, Baby (Rollercoaster).
We also watched “The Cups Song” performed by Anna Kendrick and talked about how much attention, coordination, memory, and practice it takes to put all of those movements together.
What I loved most was watching students realize that self-regulation doesn't always mean sitting still and being quiet. Sometimes we practice self-regulation by moving, playing, making mistakes, trying again, and paying close attention to what comes next.
You can continue practicing these skills at home by playing simple hand-clapping games together, learning a new rhythm, trying a dance or movement sequence, playing Simon Says, or doing any activity that requires your child to listen, remember, wait, take turns, and control their movements.
Thank you for helping us teach our students that self-regulation is a skill that grows with practice—and that practice can be fun!
Kate Fletcher
School Counselor
