Thursday, August 27, 2009

First Grade Meditations

My little Beyonce had a rough morning yesterday. She and I have been talking about having lunch together, but her behavior has meant that I haven't been willing to do it yet. Yesterday morning was so awful that I had her eat lunch in the office (something I rarely resort to). Surprisingly, the afternoon went really well. At least with Beyonce it did.

Near the end of the day, at the start of our free choice time, another little girl was crying. It had been a long day and this was not the first crying incident so I wasn't very patient with it. Beyonce was sitting near the crying one and I asked, "Are you helping the situation?" I was clearly thinking she was the cause of the crying. My wording was confusing, but once she understood she assurred me that she was helping, so I got the rest of the kids going on free choice.

When I returned to talk to the crying child, Beyonce had herself, the crier, and another friend sitting cross-legged in a circle. They were holding their hands up, fingers pinched together, eyes closed, chanting "ohmm."

It was brilliant. Now if I could just get her to give that a try when she starts to lose control.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I looked back on my blog, I had to go to fall 2006 to find it, but I had a little kindergartener who was doing that the first few weeks of school. I'd see her over on the floor, by herself, sitting crosslegged, eyes closed fingers touching, hands in the air, going "ohmmm...."

Charlotte said...

Oh that's totally brilliant!