First Posted: 1/27/2013
Take a look into Mrs. Theresa Babonis’ room 105 in the Kindergarten Center while she does a PATHS lesson with her students. This program is a fairly new addition to the kindergarten curriculum.
PATHS stands for Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies. Through these lessons, students learn about feelings and how to deal with them. They learn about making good choices in not so good situations. They also learn about appropriate and inappropriate reactions to their feelings.
These life lessons are taught to the children using four very special puppets, Twiggles the Turtle, Henrietta the Hedgehog, Daphne the Duck and Duke the Dog.
This week, Mrs. Babonis reviewed with her class the feelings of sad and happy. She then introduced the feeling of calm.
She read the students a short story entitled Twiggles and His Friends Feel Calm The book discussed all the things that make the PATHS friends feel calm.
Then, Mrs. Babonis discussed with her students all the things that make them feel calm.
To conclude the lesson, the students received a coloring sheet with a blank face on it. The students were directed to draw their best calm face. Then, they each had the opportunity to tell the teacher what makes them feel calm.