{"id":2191,"date":"2023-05-16T01:06:30","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T01:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aldiatodayusa.com\/?p=2191"},"modified":"2023-05-16T01:06:30","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T01:06:30","slug":"teaching-children-about-the-words-they-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/16\/teaching-children-about-the-words-they-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching children about the words they use"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Renee Ruffin-Price
For AL DIA TODAY<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I needed a creative way to help my grands understand why the words they sometimes use in a moment of reacting versus taking time to think before speaking, can have a negative impact, even when that is not their intent. I found examples of a social skills activity called \u201cCotton or Sandpaper Words\u201d. This was just what I needed because a hands on lesson is usually more effective than just words that end up sounding like \u201cblah, blah, blah\u2026\u201d! I found a list of examples that included sentences that I\u2019ve heard the preteens\/teens that I\u2019ve worked with often use, and then they would wonder why the situation went from sweet to sour. So before doing the hands on part of the activity, I read a few of the sentences to get my grands\u2019 \u201cpre\u201d opinions of what they considered to be \u201ccotton\u201d versus \u201csandpaper\u201d words. When I had them feel a soft quiet cotton ball and then rub a noisy rough piece of sandpaper, this step almost became an experiment situation because their comments were similar to what they would ask in a science class at school. I then restated the same sentences as before, and although some of their decisions were the same as before, they seemed to have a better understanding of WHY they should take a brief moment before speaking. The overall goal was for my grands to recognize that the words they use with their peers or adults should be intentional and have more of a cotton \u201cfeel\u201d than sandpaper. However, there will be occasions when \u201cassertive words\u201d, are necessary.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Article submitted to Al Dia Today on January 31, 2023, for the February issue by Renee\u2019 Ruffin-Price, Community Advocate for Children<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Renee Ruffin-PriceFor AL DIA TODAY I needed a creative way to help my grands understand why the words they sometimes use in a moment of reacting versus taking time to think before speaking, can […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aldiatoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}