Problem Solving in the Tel Aviv Class

On Curriculum Night we spent time sharing a few of our many goals we have for the Tel Aviv children this year...

Our goal this year is for the children to graduate with at least 5 problem solving strategies at he ready.  We want them to be skilled at the difficult task of reading other peoples intentions, we want them to know which strategy to use for any given situation, and we want them to use them skillfully. Our ultimate goal is to have parents encourage these strategies and use them at home and at school.

Problem solving and conflict resolution are some of the most important skills to learn in the earl;y childhood years.  Parents of older children tell us it is these skills that aided their child in elementary school.  We strive to teach children that they can be problem solvers and resolve conflicts.  Problems and conflicts are a normal part of life, from young children through adults.  Most importantly we aren't trying to teach children to avoid these conflicts.  Instead we seek to teach them strategies to address them.

Here is how we teach teach the strategies in our classroom.  During our small group discussions we introduce the strategies to the children one at a time.  We separated the poster in to 5 individual ones, putting one picture up at a time.  Over the last several weeks, we have referred often to the pictures when discussing conflicts, along with the different possible strategies to use to resolve them.  We have used puppets and role playing to teach the strategies but we have been most successful coaching the children to use the strategies at the critical times that the conflicts were actually happening.

After a short meeting at the rug parents were invited to use glue,colored paper, jewels and markers to decorate wooden block.  They were asked to give the block a little personality!   On Friday morning  the children had the opportunity to decorate the other side of the block.  We will place the blocks in our Block Center.  We will encourage the children to play with the blocks and use them to  role play and act-out conflicts as they arise.