“When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, it’s our job to share our calm, not to join their chaos.”

- L..R. Knost

As you know, especially if you’ve read Chapter 1 of Educate the Heart, titled Promoting Peace: 15 Ways to Empower Students to Handle Conflict Through Kindness, I am a firm believer in giving children the tools they need to cope with their feelings, manage anxiety, and develop healthy emotional growth and coping mechanisms. Because of this, I am constantly looking for new ways to help my students and children at home learn to thrive.

I’m so grateful I found this amazing new book titled Skills For Big Feelings: A Guide for Teaching Kids Relaxation, Regulation, and Coping Techniques. The author is Casey O’Brien Martin, who is a licensed mental health counselor, school adjustment counselor, registered arts therapist, registered nurse, and owner and creator of www.wholechild counseling.com.

It’s organized into a systematic 12-week program based on mindfulness techniques, breathing exercises, cognitive behavior therapy, and visualization with so many super engaging activities. There is even a 28 page reproducible workbook with stretches, breathing techniques, and relaxation skills that you can copy for each one of your children to have forever.

I love that it also comes with twelve family handouts to extend the learning at home, and sixteen trauma-informed guided relaxation scripts. I was surprised to find practical tools such as IEP objectives, a data-collection tool, and helpful surveys for both parents and children included in the book.

I am finding that it’s coming in handy for me as I add to my bag of SEL tricks and it’s perfect for extending the learning of my favorite anxiety-reducing storybooks.

And guess what? Although a paperback version of Skills for Big Feelings is available here on Amazon, you can win your own fee electronic version with an awesome bonus bundle by entering my giveaway here on this post on my Instagram page!

Good Luck!

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog. I truly appreciate your time and attention and I hope you found this post worthwhile.

Yours truly,

Jennifer