Tag: strengths

Strong Suits™: A Game to Boost Social Emotional Learning

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Making Social Emotional Learning Fun

 Strong Suits™, a game for communication skills, engages young players in a fun card game. In it, participants identify and communicate their strengths, personality, and individuality.

In addition, this quick and easy game builds mental/social-emotional health skills. These communication skills include self-confidence, resilience, self-knowledge, self-respect, and the respect of others.

The game, designed for 2 or more players, works well played at home or in groups in the classroom. Along with its ability to work for camps and after-school programs.

This image shows an abstract illustration of a diverse group of people with different interests and vocations. Because groups are often diverse, a game for communication skills is not only engaging but critical.

Get Strong Suits™ in the new aws Studios Store!

Other social emotional learning activities and games currently on the shelves at the aws Studios Store:

  • “Circle of Community™” – a fun team-building activity that works well with groups or teams. The activity presents well in the classroom or in the home! “Circle…” shows teams/groups how to work together. This includes keeping conflict to a minimum. This gives groups/teams a better chance of reaching their goals or going for a win.
  • “Reframe It™” is a fun game that builds empathy and an understanding. In particular, it does this exploring child and parent behavior or why kids and parents do what they do! The engaging and interactive game offers players a chance to think about modifying their reactions to challenging behaviors. And it offers ideas on how to alter the environment for more positive behaviors. In addition, this game for Parenting Educators and their parent groups works with pre-teens and teens.
  • “DIY Hardcover Picture Book,” on how to craft your own hardcover picture book.

To purchase this and other activities and a game for communication skills and social emotional learning at the aws Studios Store, you will need to make a FREE Teachers Pay Teachers account. Anyone with a FREE Teachers Pay Teachers account can purchase materials at the aws Studios Store!

And be sure to Like the aws Studios Store, give me a Rating or Review or Ask Me a Question! Check it out here!

How to Get Along with Others

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Building a Circle of Community

Just about everywhere – school, work, families, neighborhoods – we have to work and get along with others. If conflict is kept to a minimum, everyone “gets along” better. And the group, team or committee accomplishes its goal more effectively and efficiently. But key to this effectiveness and efficiency is knowing “how” to work together. Often, we’re expected to do this with no instruction or guidance. Teaching about keeping conflict to a minimum and get groups to their goal or “win” often lacks in education. My activity, Circle of Community™, shows teams how to work together to keep conflict to a minimum giving them a better chance of reaching their goals.

a picture of the Totem Animals used in the Circle of Community team building resource that helps students learn how to get along with others

Teamwork

A scene in Apollo 13 provides my favorite illustration of positive teamwork. The astronauts stranded in their capsule need to get back to earth. The NASA scientists and engineers work together to solve the problem. I enjoy challenges with a problem to solve. But not unless I do it with others. For me, there’s comfort in working on a team. I like offering my strengths to the group but I don’t have to know or do everything!  Where I lack certain knowledge or skills, other members’ strengths compensate.

Reducing Conflict and Bad Feelings

But thrown into groups, there’s an expectation everyone will get along. With no direction for how to deal with different personalities, ways of thinking and problem-solving methods, conflict and bad feelings arise.

A Way to Get Along While Working Together

Circle of Community™ helps groups bypass conflict and bad feelings by showing them a way to work together. The activity provides a fun and easy way to build communication skills by assessing each member’s strengths and challenges. By understanding why members do or say what they do, inner team conflict decreases paving a solid road to their business of problem solving.

Circle of Community™ is an activity that works to build community within groups, teams, families, etc. It provides a playful way to learn about each other’s strengths and challenges, illustrating how working together and getting along is an effective strategy for solving problems and attaining group goals.

The activity is for teachers, trainers, Human Resources, parenting educators, parents or any teams or groups working together in for-profit and non-profit organizations.

Every team needs Circle of Community™!

click here to Get Circle of Community™ at “teachers pay teachers”