Books to Help You Teach About the Brain

Here are some great books that we use to teach kids about the brain in preparation for Healthy Brain/Screentime Turnoff Week. In first through  fifth grades we use the Smartboard with pictures, info, and links to video and animations that show the brain, healthy and unhealthy neurons, and how neurotransmission works. We also use these books, and would use them more extensively in class councils if we didn’t have the Smartboard.

Substance Abuse and the Brain

Freebie Alert!

The kids at our school LOVE learning about their brains! As I mentioned in my last post, It’s Not Mania, It’s Brain-O-Mania!, I began teaching about the brain in a quest to help kids learn how to limit their screentime and increase the amount of time they spend engaged in exploring, playing, being active, reading, and other brain-healthy activities. Once I realized how fascinated and excited the kids are about neuroscience, I started incorporating it into other lesson topics — feelings, bullying, conflict resolution, personal safety, and substance abuse.

Last fall I discovered a great, FREE resource for teaching about substance abuse and the brain.

It’s Not Mania, It’s Brain-O-Mania!

This is my busiest time of the year!  (Which might help to explain the lapse in blogging.) Classes, groups, and individual counseling are full steam ahead; we are deeply into the application and interview process for hiring multiple new teachers; kindergarten screening and middle school transition are looming; lots of kids are really struggling; and next week is our Healthy Brain/Screen Time Turnoff Week.

Ten years ago, our teachers began noticing some significant changes in kids’ ability to focus and persevere on their work.

Helping Kids Understand Asperger’s

The kids at my school are generally pretty accepting and understanding about their classmates’ learning differences and disabilities. They offer to help when appropriate, and are good about including others. They know the names of all the kids with significant disabilities, greet them in the hall and their classrooms, and some even volunteer to work with them. We spend a lot of time talking about how everyone learns differently, that we all have things that make us different, and that none of us likes to be picked on or excluded. They are usually patient about disruptive behaviors, especially if the student’s disability is obvious and/or a paraprofessional works with the student.

The difficulty comes when a not-so-obvious disability is combined with repetitive, disruptive or annoying behaviors

The Curse of the Mouse Continues

This one is WAY cuter than my visitor was!

My run of bad luck is continuing. I blame rodents. Somehow the brilliantly written (hah!) first paragraph of “The Mouse was the Least of It” was missing from the original post. It might have had something to do with the trauma reaction I experienced while searching mouse images. Or maybe I’m just a dope.  Anyway, here it is again for those of you who have this automatically delivered by email. Now you too can be in the loop of what happened before the mouse poop incident. The poop loop! (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.) If you’re stumbling upon this while looking at the blog, you are not having deja vu — I fixed the original post. I hope this is my last rodent-related entry. So, probably, do you. It is unlikely to be the last poop-related entry, as those of you who have been in this school counseling racket for awhile can probably attest. Just saying.

The Mouse was the Least of It

This one is WAY cuter than my visitor was!

Yesterday was one of those days when I fantasize about working in a bookstore. At one point my principal and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, “I quit!” The past two weeks has been pretty intense (hence the dearth of blog posts), but culminated on this particular Friday with one kid choking another until he turned purple, confiscation of a toy gun and lighter,  a bloody fat lip, a report of sexual abuse, and a live mouse in my trash can that I almost TOUCHED when I reached down to fix the collapsed garbage bag. And this was all BEFORE 9:30 in the morning! The rest of the day didn’t get much better.