Tell-Me-Toss Game

        Let me first start off by saying that this is totally not an original idea. I did not come up with this in any way, shape, or form. I will gladly post some of my favorite blogs and sites that have utilized this idea on my Littles and Bigs Group Pinterest boards. If you haven’t yet, please check out The Trauma Teacher on Pinterest where I am always updating ideas for residential and support programs, learning spaces, and more!

Tell Me Toss or Tell Me Dice, depending on what you use or have on hand at the time, is an awesome game to keep in your back pocket should you need to fill a time gap. Every group I have ever played this game with has enjoyed it and the customization options are really limitless. If your group is old enough to stand, toss a ball, roll dice, follow directions, and read or comprehend simple pictures, this activity can absolutely work for you. What makes it fun is the mystery of not knowing what you will land on and what you will have to do. I have made adjustments to this game for nearly every lesson I’ve ever taught and it has fit beautifully into every single one. 

The first time I can remember encountering this activity was at a training as an icebreaker game. It was upon my return that I immediately went to work figuring out how to incorporate it into my group lessons. There isn’t much set up if you keep the right tools on hand so even if you have a full night of activities planned, you can still pull this one out should you finish everything else up early or just need to change gears. You can go online and buy professionally printed dice and balls but I have never had the funding nor saw the purpose when making your own keeps things so much more flexible. If you see that purchasing a printed version is best suited for your program, then more power to you. I have personally used a printed dice foldables (provided in this post!) and a small donated bounce ball for this game. Simply write the questions or actions you want to use on either one in sharpie. For a more durable dice option, you can check your local Dollar Tree education section to see if they have large dry erase play dice. I have been lucky enough to find them a few times. Another option is to use a cube shaped cardboard box. There is really no limit to what can be used to make this game work as long as it is light and not breakable. Regular dice could even be used with a numbered list! (Any fellow nerdy advocates could incorporate their D20 collection)

This can be just as much a social experiment as a fun game for the kids. I highly recommend that you pay close attention to make sure everyone is getting a turn. If you do notice over time that one or two people are consistently being left out of the game, stop everything immediately and address it. This game is just as much about sharing and inclusion as it is about teaching whatever lesson you have revolved it around. This game should never EVER be allowed to be used as means for bullying. Everyone has to get a turn, both in catching the ball or receiving whatever praise or nice comments are requested on a turn.

The game is simple. If you are using a ball, you toss to one person and whatever command their thumb lands on is what they are supposed to do. The command can be complimenting someone else in the circle, telling information about themselves, giving an example of a topic, or any number of other things. Then the player chooses another person to toss to. If you are using a die, it is the same idea but they roll the die on the floor and then hand off to another person after they’re done their command. At the end of the post, you will find a much more detailed instruction card for how to play as well as photos and links to others who have used this activity with their classes or groups. If you like this activity and opt to use it in your own advocacy, I would love to hear about it. Comment down below and tell me how it went with a picture of what you used to play!

    As always, I hope you have a blast with this activity and thank you for all that you do in helping children heal. You are amazing and an inspiration, don’t ever forget it!

Good Luck and Keep Fighting,

♥️Jess

 

Random Acts of Kindness Calendar

     This is always a go to when I am teaching kindness in a support group. Since I try to keep this lesson as one of the first introductory topics to get kids in the swing of things (fourth week at the LATEST) I find that it sets a tone early on of carrying these skills and ideas home to practice throughout the rest of the week. It is a really fun activity to be done independently or as a family that DOUBLES as a tool for kids to use in their own journey to empowerment and adding a bit more kindness into the world. If it goes over well, this calendar can be adapted to other lessons as well. It can be used to create a schedule of self-esteem mantras, track things a child is grateful for around thanksgiving, and set small baby-step goals for responsibility.

I should mention that, personally, I try to keep my groups super low pressure. I have very little expectation when it comes to kids taking work home to complete and bring back. The kids that I (and I would assume you) work with are already carrying a heavy load of healing from their own stress in life as well as normal kid academic, homework, and extracurricular commitments. That being said, I have been known to offer small rewards for anyone that CHOOSES to take a worksheet like this home, complete it, and bring it back with proof (usually parent initial or testimony) that they actually followed through with a few of the things they wrote down. It is totally up to you to decide how much of a commitment you want your support group to be, but just keep in mind the age you’re working with and what else they likely have going on outside of your learning space.

Along with this calendar activity, I usually keep full page print outs of this adorable list from CoffeecupsAndCrayons to give to parents at the end of the group with the weekly newsletter. It is super cute with lots of color and has lots of ideas for cheap and free Random Act of Kindness tasks for kids and families to do. Typically my families don’t have much money to throw around at non-necessities so this is great to encourage low stress participation. Some of my favorites are making thank you and get well soon cards that can be hand delivered for free (or mailed for the cost of postage), picking flowers for a teacher, drying off play equipment at the park after it rains, and making kindness stones to place in public gardens. There are so many other great ideas all over the internet so you can choose to print off premade lists or create your own!

As far as the calendar itself, you can be as creative with this as you like. I never knew what age groups I was going to have until everyone arrived so for me it was practical to make and print off copies of my own calendar worksheet. Early on I used this activity when I was going to be teaching kindness in January and made specific month calendars with the dates already printed in. It was a cute way to tie in the new year and starting new habits of being kind. I found, however, that the activity had a lot of success and kids actually brought it back the next week, so I started using it throughout the year and had to make a flexible calendar. If you enjoy playing around with computer graphics programs like I do, I would recommend creating a basic 5x7 square calendar table with enough space for the kiddos to write in the month and dates themselves. Then you can keep copies to use at any time. I made a sample of something that I would use in one of my groups that also has space at the side where they can write down ideas they might hear during group that they can put into their calendar.

If you’re not computer savvy, don’t fret! There is also the option, especially with elementary and older groups, to make their own calendars. Really all you need to provide is some paper, markers and drawing utensils, and any other art supplies you have on hand (sticky notes and cut up paint chips from home improvement stores work great for calendar squares) and a sample calendar as a template. Then you can just let the kids get creative. This would even be a great art journaling project if you opt to have your groups keep a weekly journal throughout the sessions.

Finally, if neither of these appeal to you you can pretty easily pull up premade calendar templates in Microsoft office to print off or make copies of a store bought calendar page. Whatever you choose to do, I am sure it will. Get the job done and equip your kids for the job. I hope that this has been helpful. Please comment down below and let me know if you want to see more content like this. I would love to hear if you chose to use this activity and how it went. As always...

Good Luck & Keep Fighting,

Jess ♥️

Organizing a Support Group for LITTLES - Ages 4-9 years

    Welcome to the elementary level group. Bear in mind that your age ranges don’t have to match mine exactly. Honestly I just made an educated guess on where to draw the line and ran with it. It is all going to depend on your needs and the resources you have available to you. If this is the first post on TheTraumaTeacher that you are reading, stop what you are doing and rewind a few weeks to my “Support Groups for Kids?!” post before reading on. 

This is where a classroom style group is really going to start making sense. Kids this age are either just starting school and learning the routines or already have a few years experience under their belts knowing what to expect. No need to try and reinvent the wheel here. Something that you will want to keep in mind with this age group, though, is the short attention span. Elementary schools have recess and hands on project learning for a reason. Children this age aren’t going to learn well by sitting quietly listening or even conversation. They need to be engaged in interesting things and moving around once in a while.

For littles, I have found it best to switch gears often and plan a series of activities related to the main topic so the kiddos don’t have enough time to get bored. It is also a good idea to give them an opportunity to burn off any excess wiggly energy before starting discussion. As with every other post, I would like to remind that my background is mainly in working with children affected by violence and abuse but truly believe that this basic layout can work for children of any demographic in need of support programming.

DROP-OFF

This is going to be highly dependent on what resources and spaces you have available to you as well as any schedule you are having to abide by. The most successful drop-off scenario I have had thus far has been an outdoor sign-in procedure. Parents were asked to accompany their child to the drop-off and actively sign their child into the group. This has a lot of positive benefits. It gave myself the opportunity to speak briefly with the parent about how the week has been and get a feel for if the family was in need of any further services or referrals usually out of earshot of the already playing child. It is a great low-pressure atmosphere for any children new to the group as they can choose to join a group of already playing children to get acquainted or play on their own and observe while they adapt. It also serves the aforementioned purpose of getting out any overflowing wiggles before the group. This is by far my favorite approach as it gives kids time to just BE KIDS around other kids like them.

In times where weather has been an issue, a backup plan I have used has been the parent settling the child in for dinner at drop-off. If the group I was facilitating wasn’t having a meal, I would have related “starter” worksheets made up and printed set up in a way that the children could access on their own as they entered along with pencils, crayons, or any other tools needed for the assignment. Unfortunately a downside to this approach with this age is that you will likely have kiddos still learning to read and write and may be unable to complete it on their own (usually leading to bored and frustrated misbehavior). I mostly use this approach if I am short on extra adult hands and have a combined littles/bigs group and older kids are available to help the younger ones. This is not a perfect approach and definitely has its hang ups but it can do in a pinch. You are basically just aiming to keep your group engaged and entertained long enough that everyone can filter in (someone is ALWAYS late).

TOPIC DISCUSSION

Imagine you’re a teacher. Now open your eyes because that is exactly what you are. Or at least to them you are, which is a good thing. School teaches kids to respect, listen to, and trust their teachers so let them believe it. No need to confuse them with titles they’ve never heard of. If you’re group is violence or abuse related, this can also have an added benefit should there be a visitation agreement in place and the child decides to starting talking about their favorite teacher Ms. Jessie and how fun she is during those visitations with the other parent. “Advocate” may raise eyebrows and trigger further questioning.

Again the number and subject of your topics is going to be totally relative to your needs and resources. My experience usually meant I was working in unison with an adult support program so I mirrored the format of that group when deciding how long my program cycles would be. If they had an off week with some sort of special event planned, I would plan something on my end as well. My group started when theirs started and ended when theirs ended.

In the groups that I have facilitated, the best basis for themes that I have found thus far have revolved around character education. Most children have heard the theme words I use from their teachers, guidance counsellors, coaches, and likely even their parents at home. An observation I noticed in myself as well as in these kids AND their parents is that the theme words I chose were used so often and freely that when I asked anyone what the word actually meant, they weren’t able to tell me. Take a moment for yourself and try to write down definitions for a few of the following words WITHOUT using the word in the definition: Humility, Forgiveness, Self-Esteem, Respect, Responsibility. You may be tempted to write examples instead of a definition, but those still don’t explain WHAT those words MEAN. That is what I chose to teach. Every lesson started with that exact exercise as I called on raised hands to try and give me a real definition for that night’s topic word. We then followed it up with the actual dictionary definition. My goal was to break these big, seemingly simple but surprisingly complex concepts down to their bare bones. This way, I wasn’t telling these kids where they should be seeing examples of each topic, but giving them the ability to evaluate situations on their own. I followed the definition with a few pre-planned discussion questions to encourage participation and critical thinking. Some examples of these open ended questions might have been: How do we show humility? What are the benefits of being responsible? What does low self-esteem look like? Who does forgiveness affect? Questions like these, I’ve found, do a great job at allowing a child to reflect on their own experiences and interactions in a gentle and healthy way. It is worth mentioning that with this age, you’re going to want to watch the clock and try to keep this section short with a max time of 30 minutes or the wiggles will emerge.

DRIVE IT HOME

This will be the bulk of your group time so prepare accordingly. As mentioned before, kids this age are wiggly and short fused. They aren’t going to cooperate doing one activity for too long. You have a couple of options here. You can have preset activities for each topic (I would recommend 2-3 for each) or you can use a method that worked for me and create a pool of activities that you mix and match from each week. This is a great method if you are just starting out and have more topics than you have activities and can also allow your group to revisit and recycle some old favorites from earlier in the session. Again, keep them short and prepare multiple. If you see your kids losing interest, move on to the next one. You also want to make sure you’re taking the time to reflect with the kids on how the activity relates back to the night’s topic. Don’t just tell them, ask why they think you chose that game. A crowd favorite of mine has always been a game I called “blind man.” It was super flexible because it could be easily adapted to almost half of my curriculum and the kids always asked to play it over and over. Their favorite was when it was Ms. Jessie’s turn to wear the blindfold and they got to tell me where to walk. If you’re interested in this activity, let me know in the comments and I will make a future post with more information about it.

SEND OFF

Now is when things can get a bit tricky if you don’t have procedures in place. For a long time, I struggled with being at the mercy of another group and never knowing when my group was going to end. Some sessions we would get through everything on time and I would just be throwing coloring sheets at the kids trying to keep them entertained until they were picked up. Other sessions we would be halfway through our first activity and giving directions with parents suddenly starting to filter in half an hour earlier than they were expected causing my entire group to dissolve into chaos. Any point I had been trying to get across was effectively shattered. There is a better way, but it takes a lot of persistence and communication of expectation. What worked for me was to have a waiting area set up for parents outside of my teaching zone with already printed and displayed information about what was going on with kids programming. This would usually consist of the weekly newsletter covered the night’s lesson plan, a calendar of upcoming events that month, and an extra handout or brochure detailing further information or a local resource to help continue practicing the skill learned that night. Some handouts might have self-esteem building positive affirmations for the family to practice, a list of age appropriate books about the nightly topic, or a calendar of easy and free/cheap acts of kindness for the parents to consider trying. I would also have instructions in this area that group was still taking place and would be finished momentarily. 

Is everyone going to pay attention to this? Not at first and some maybe not ever. But with consistency, I hope you will have mostly success with this method. As I’ve said before, the best we can do is put the tools in a person’s hands and hope they use them. It isn’t our fault if they don’t, but it can't be said that we didn’t try and give it our all.

I feel it is important to remind anyone reading this far into the post that our job, tasks, and responsibilities are just as important, if not debatably more important than anyone else’s. Anyone that works with children has worked far too long in a world where no matter what role they were in or age they worked with, they were seen by an alarming chunk of the population as babysitters.  This just is not so. Especially if you are working in an advocacy field, but even those working across the board in child related fields, your work is important. We are the architects of the future. It is our job to shape, inform, and prepare the minds of the upcoming generation to run this world when we are gone. The people that we are shaping will still be around as we grow old as our doctors, nurses, lawyers, bankers, drivers, cashiers, cooks, etc. The skills and knowledge we teach them will affect their ability to carry out those jobs for sure, but the wisdom and morality that we bestow on them will affect how well and compassionately they treat us while they do.

As always, I hope that this information helps you in your journey creating your own children’s programming. If you have any questions about any of the information in this post, what me to elaborate on anything specific, or would even like to share your own experiences, I would love to interact with you in the comments. As always…

Good Luck & Keep Fighting,

Jess ♥️