“We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.” –William J. Clinton
For sure everyone or every parent would agree to the quote above that as parents we must teach our children to resolve conflict with friends by communicating to each other or by using words, and not by using their hands or anything to hurt each other. Another quote says, “Children can begin the process of conflict resolution around 2, but your child will need a lot of your help. They’ll need you to give them a lot of the words on what to say in the beginning.” Sometimes, children tend to hurt another child when they have a conflict because they don’t know how to solve the problem or because they don’t know what to say or do to solve the problem. In our UOI3, we are focusing on strategies on how to resolve conflicts with their friends. One of our workstation activities related to UOI is “What would you do if…” problem solving scenario activity cards wherein students pick one or two cards and try to solve the problem by telling the teacher what they would do or say if that scenario happens to them in real life. In this activity, students practice what words they have to use or say in a specific situation and learn to understand the feelings of the people involved in the problem. Since Milky Way students already have ideas on how to resolve conflicts, we had another group activity wherein students created a poster showing ways or strategies how to solve problems with their friends. We posted it on the wall which will also serve as their reminders whenever they have a conflict with their friends. After doing this activity, we noticed some improvements in the class, now we can see some of them trying those strategies to solve a conflict with their friends and their favorite solution is doing “rock-scissors-paper”.
Another goal we want to achieve for our class is to build a better relationship with one another and to know each other more. And we came up with this activity wherein students choose a friend during afternoon circle time and say something good about him/her, share what good thing he/she did on that day, or what he/she did that made them happy that day. We also did a personality scavenger hunt activity. The students have to find the person that is being described by the teacher and give a heart shaped paper to that person. They loved receiving hearts from their friends and were very happy to see that their friends know who they are.
We had a very special activity on Thursday with two of the players of the Matsumoto Yamaga FC. We had so much fun learning how to play soccer and enjoyed the games we played with them. Who will forget playing dodgeball with a giant ball? They also had a chance to ask questions related to our UOI3 and were very glad to hear good and useful answers from the coaches.
The school conducted the monthly emergency drill on Thursday but this one was a little bit special because we were able to do it with the supervision of some of our firefighters. They had a chance to learn from the firefighters how to be safe in case of an emergency like earthquake and fire. The teachers asked to demonstrate how to use fire extinguishers. And finally, the students had a chance to look closely at the fire truck and take some nice pictures with the firefighters.
Our reading lesson on Wednesday raised students’ inquiry about money. Before opening the book “I Save Money”, the teacher showed Japanese bills and coins, some are real and some are just pretend money. Everybody was so excited to talk about money and kept sharing how much money they have, what kind of piggy bank, coin bank, or money box they have, and what they want to buy after saving money. They got more thrilled when the teacher showed them two Philippine 5 peso coins with different shapes. They touched and looked at it and they were just so amazed to see a real Philippine peso coin for the first time. They discovered various American money both bills and coins, in the book that we read. After lunch, they started to play with the pretend Japanese and American money. Everybody wants to have money, so they did their best to convince their friends to share some money with them. “I don’t have money. Can I have some money please?” “Let’s count how much money we have.” “I have 10 dollars.” “I have 10 000 yen.”
That’s all for this week! Thank you for reading our blog and have a great weekend!
