Second Step: Social-Emotional Learning for Early Learning
We use the Second Step early learning program in your child’s classroom to teach how to learn and get along with others.
The Second Step program teaches skills in the following four areas:
1. Skills for Learning: Children gain skills to help them be better learners, including how to focus their attention, listen carefully, and ask for help.
2. Empathy: Children learn to identify and understand their own and others’ feelings. Children also learn how to show care for others.
3. Emotion Management: Children learn how to calm down when they have strong feelings, such as worry or anger.
4. Friendship Skills and Problem Solving: Children learn how to make and keep friends and to solve problems with others in a positive way.
Classrooms are finishing up units on Empathy this month. At the end of January the lessons in the Emotion Management unit will begin. Visit www.secondstep.org/families for more information.
At Home:
Help your child learn develop empathy skills at home. A concept taught during Second Step lessons is that there are two different ways to tell how someone feels:
- Look at their faces and bodies for clues.
- Focus attention on what is happening.
To help you child, model using these two ways to make a guess about how someone feels during every day activities including sharing books, playing, and shopping. Another way is to tell about your face and body clues, as well as what is happening, when you are exhibiting a feeling.
Outdoor play continues throughout all the seasons at Fox Ridge, weather permitting, and is an important part of our curriculum. Classrooms go outside as long as conditions are safe to do so and the temperature, including wind-chill, is above 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Please be sure your preschooler has clothes appropriate for outdoor play daily. If weather prohibits outdoor play (e.g., raining, too cold, or hazardous conditions like ice present) classrooms use one of our indoor motor areas. If you are in need of a warmer coat for your child please contact Tricia Sabathne, Child and Family Educator, at tricia.sabathne@d303.org
Fox Ridge Early Childhood Center
Website: https://foxridge.d303.org/
Location: 1905 East Tyler Road, St. Charles, IL, USA
Phone: 331-228-2400