Monday, March 10, 2014

Coffee with Cale - a psychologist & parents expert workshop!

Today at Hamagrael we were so lucky to have Dr. Randy Cale, a local psychologist and parenting expert come in for one of his parenting workshops.  This was just one of many sessions he has offered to the Bethlehem School District.  Our topic today was titled "Mom... I hate you. Can you buy me a new phone?" and focused on managing communication with children in order to create kindness and respect between both the parent and the child.  This workshop was applicable to children of all different ages, personalities, and communication styles.  We had a great audience, as these sessions are open to any parents in the district, no matter which school it is located at.  I was lucky to be able to sit in on this talk and took plenty of notes in case any of my Hamagrael parents come to me with similar problems with their children. If you seem to be struggling with your child when it comes to kind and respectful communication please feel free to ask questions about his presentation!

There is only one more "Coffee with Cale" session left.  This one will be held on April 7th at Slingerlands Elementary School at 9:30 am.  This topic is "Dealing with Childhood Anxiety: Practical tools for parents." Even if you do not feel your child has extreme anxiety, many children may struggle with feelings of anxiety over little things here and there. For some children this may be a new feeling that they do not completely understand.  Having these practical tools available when you need them may be helpful for all parents! We hope to see you all there!

For more information on our districts collaboration with Dr. Cale you can click here: http://bethlehemschools.org/News/201314/131028parentexpert2.html

For Dr. Cale's website you can click here: http://drrandycale.com/

And if you have any other questions about this, as always, please feel free to reach out to me about this by e-mail at ehunter@bcsd.neric.org !

Monday, March 3, 2014

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

For those of you who did not know this, yesterday was Dr. Seuss's birthday! We had a lot of fun celebrating this at Hamagrael today. Our principal, Mr. K was dressed up as the cat in the hat and visiting classrooms this morning, and many classrooms were decorated with different crafts from his various books. 

Dr. Seuss has always been my favorite author so of course I had to do something to celebrate today. One of my favorite quotes from him is, "Today you are you! That is truer then true! There is no one alive who is youer then you!" I shared that quote with first grade and we made self-esteem cat in the hat masks! I asked them to reflect on what their favorite qualities are about themselves, and what makes them unique. They then wrote three of them on their hats! 

In friendship groups we talked about qualities that we need to be a good friend and wrote those on our hats. Both sets of masks turned out adorable! Here are some pictures from our birthday celebrations today...




This week is also national Read Across America week AND Hamagrael's no TV week. If you are participating in no TV week make sure to bring your slips to be entered in the raffle.  Turning in your slips gives you a chance to win a $8 coupon for our book fair that we have going on this week! Don't forget to stop in and check out all of our books while they are here.