JOIN THE IMAGINATION CONVERSATION: Problem Solving with the Fire Pirates!

Hello from The Imagine Neighborhood!

This week on the show, we helped Cap'n Marion resolve her eternal feud with Fieryous George the Lava Monster. This week's activities will build upon important problem-solving skills and themes to help you and your kids better solve those tough problems that come up during tough times.

The Second Step skills we’ll be practicing this week are calming down when conflicts arise and finding safe, respectful solutions.

Add these activities to your Google Classroom

Cap'n Marion and the Fire Pirates!

Monday: The Imagine Neighborhood Podcast

This week in The Imagine Neighborhood, Scotty helps out Cap'n Marion and the Fire Pirates with a pretty big problem. Things can get a little heated when you’re cooped up together—whether it’s in your home or on a pirate ship. We talk about ways to solve problems respectfully and the importance of calming down to help you listen to other’s perspectives. If Cap'n Marion and Fieryous George the Lava Monster can compromise, so can you!

Listen to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast below or click here.

Tuesday: Dr. Sherri’s Emotion Experiments

On Tuesdays, Dr. Sherri, P!H!D! is back (in cartoon form) with a series of Emotion Experiments to help us practice the new skills we learned on Monday. This week, she breaks down the importance of finding a calm-down strategy to help kids stay focused when big feelings start to take over. By practicing a few ideas and finding the one that works the best, kids will gain confidence in controlling a situation and helping to resolve it. Best of all, as Dr Sherri says . . .

DrSherriEmotionExp1-final.pdf

Download PDF • 568KB

Click above to download Dr. Sherri's Emotion Experiment for this week.

Wednesday: Mr. Music Man Lindsay Jones

Wednesdays are for exploring feelings with music! Each week on The Imagine Neighborhood, we use music to help us talk about how we’re feeling. Our special guest, Mr. Music Man Lindsay Jones, is a Broadway sound designer and composer. He’ll help us learn more about how music tells stories and can inspire all kinds of feelings.

Listen to our bonus episode with Mr. Music Man Lindsay Jones below or click here.

Thursday: I Like to Move It, Move It!

A lot of our activities work out your mind, but how about something to work out your body? Every Thursday, we'll be bringing you a set of videos focused on

movement, energy, and creative expression. For those days when families are

feeling cooped up, we’ve got videos and activities that will help kids (safely) express themselves—with a few social-emotional learning opportunities in there too. We’ll have a wide variety of videos from resources we’ve tested out ourselves (or that at least got the “thumbs up” from Macho Supreme), so we know they’ll help you move, groove, dance, shake, stretch, and boogie to get the wiggles out.

For younger listeners, try out the Calm It Down Dance below (or click here) from the award-winning Second Step curriculum.

For older students, try out the Chillax music video from the cool gang at Go Noodle.

Questions to ask both younger and older kids after the video activity:

· Can you remember some ways to calm down from the video?

· What works best for you when you need to calm down?

· If you could add more words (lyrics) or more movements to the song, what would you add to show other ways to calm down?

Friday: Mind Yeti Mindfulness Practice

On Fridays, we’ll take a moment to pause, breathe, and reflect with Mind Yeti. In With Mind Yeti mindfulness sessions, kids and adults can practice calming their minds, focusing their attention, and connecting to the world around them. These sessions last between three and six minutes and offer a moment of calm at the end of a busy week. You can learn more about Mind Yeti and the importance of mindfulness in the video below or by clicking here.

This Friday, we’ll start by discovering your body’s calming superpower: your breath. Try out this week’s Mind Yeti session below.

Activity Ideas

Hubbubble Drawing (best for younger kids):

Ask kids to first think about their day and then draw a few large Hubbubbles to represent the different thoughts, feelings, and sensations they’ve had. They can write what the thought, feeling, or sensation was inside each Hubbubble (if you're helping them, they can tell it to you). They can also choose a color to represent each Hubbubble category.

Hubbubble Journal (best for older kids):

Ask kids to reflect on and then briefly write about Hubbubbles they’ve had that day, making sure to identify whether the Hubbubble was a thought, feeling, or sensation. If the Hubbubble got in the way of being able to think clearly, they can write about that, too.

Thanks so much. We really appreciate our listeners, and I hope you and your loved ones are safe, happy, healthy, and kind.

Scotty