This DVD (48 minutes) shows examples of teachers implementing the Dina Dinosaur Classroom Social Skills and Problem-Solving Curriculum. It shows how teachers can use circle time, small group activities, and unstructured interactions to help young children learn emotional literacy skills, self-regulatory skills, problem-solving strategies, and friendship skills. It also shows teachers responding to students’ disregulated behavior with appropriate discipline so that negative interactions are not reinforced. Includes leader’s manual.
Key concepts of the program include:
- Helping children recognize and label their feelings with a particular emphasis on self-regulatory feelings such as calmness, happiness, and patience. Children are also taught to understand that feelings can change and that other people’s feelings may be different from their own.
- Building children’s repertoire of solutions to frustrating situations (being able to wait, keep trying, offer to trade or share, being able to use words to express feelings, and ignoring).
- Modeling a Dinosaur School friendship lesson plan that focuses on feeling language, importance of gentle touch, and friendship skills. Practicing ways to cope with frustration (ignoring and trading).
- Modeling, teaching, and reinforcing what it means to be gentle and friendly.
- Discipline strategies for teachers responding to disregulated behavior, such as effective strategies for handling tantrums, fights, and hitting others. These include using calm-down strategies when upset, ignoring misbehavior, natural consequences, and Time-Out for hitting.
