About Children’s Behaviors
When children react with aggression towards what was seemingly a simple request the underlying principle may be one of frustration. If tasks they could accomplish yesterday can't be done today, they become angry. If the tasks become more difficult or more restrictions are applied, they may react with anger. Sometimes subtle actions like not eating their food or bedwetting may be their response. Sometimes more violent actions become a way of controlling the situation. *It becomes clear that even if the children can't communicate their frustration, they can act out the frustration and achieve attention!
Words, Geometric Shapes, and Emotions Activities
Activity #1 – Be an Occupation. Children like to mimic and asking a child to mimic individually an occupation like be a piano player, teacher, animal trainer, ballet dancer or any other occupation created by you. It is fun to watch children create and use their imagination to fulfill the occupation.
Activity #2 – Be a Geometric Shape. Children individually are asked to use their bodies and make a circle, or square, or triangle, or make designs like a flower by starting first to create a stem, adding leaves, and then the flowers. This one really takes thinking and imagination to perform.
Activity #3 – Be an Emotion. Children individually show emotions like mad, happy, puzzled, worry, etc. Find pictures and cut them out from magazines, cartoon clips from newspapers, or from clip art on the internet. Place them in a basket, mix them up, let the child pick out a picture and then show perform that emotion to the class and let the class guess it. You can also divide the class into 2 teams and a point is earned for each correct answer.
...Non-Rhythm Symbols
Non-Rhythmical Symbols:
The following symbols are introduced one at a time to the whole class. Have the first symbol (!) placed on a whiteboard/blackboard and then do "rub rub knees." ‼!! = rub rub knees
Next add the second symbol
x X X =clapping soft, loud, louder
Repeat the first two symbols, before adding the third symbol.
Repeat all 3 symbols.
^ = say “shh” and slide the pointed index finger up to the ceiling.
Repeat all 4 symbols.
Repeat all 5 symbols and repeat this 3 times.
*Children later can create their own sounds and their own symbols.
This activity involves both "looking at the symbols" and "doing the action" for each.
*Two different parts of the brain is being thought out at the same time!