Empathy

We started our unit on empathy this week.  The past couple of days we have talked about and focused on the importance of watching/reading people's facial expressions and body language.  We talked about how we can often tell how a person is feeling based on their face looks.  We watched a quick little video about a boy who got lost from his family for a few minutes.  We noticed how he looked when he was lost and then how he looked when he was found.

We talked about how as friends in our classroom, we can be aware of how other people are feeling by watching their facial expressions.  We can then respond in an appropriate and helpful way. 

We read the book, Little Beauty.  Even though the characters are animals, they had some great facial expressions that showed how they were feeling!  See if your child can retell the story to you.

Today we talked about the importance of working hard and the feeling of accomplishment when we have persevered and achieved a goal! Ask you child to tell you about Super Dog and the things that he had to overcome!

 

My hope and goal is that these lessons will carry over to everyday life - both at school and and at home.  Developmentally second graders are starting to make the shift from focusing so much on themselves to focusing on other people and their feelings.  We will talk a lot about perspective and seeing things from another person's point of view.