Because this is the first year we've done the 7 habits, we decided to carve out some serious time every day to devote to learning about and practicing the habit,with the goal of learning one a week. I found this time in my morning meeting; instead of a regular activity, we started doing a habit-related activity for 5 to 15 minutes. Just a little bit of time a day, but I can already see a difference in their behavior and in their language!
Habit 1 is "Be proactive"- Take charge of your mood, your actions, and your attitude. We did 5 mini-lessons on this habit.
Day 1: Chapter 1 of Sean Covey's beautiful book, 7 Habits of Happy Kids; it tells the story of a bored kid who depends on other people to come up with something for him to do until he realizes that he's in charge of what he does!
Day 2: We read the book Soda Pop Head by Julia Cook, about a kid named Lester who is very reactive. It gives some awesome strategies to practice being proactive instead!
Day 3: I adapted this sort from The Teaching Thief to make a proactive or reactive worksheet. Grab it free here!
Day 4: We watched an episode of Happy Kids from the Leader in Me website. I was shocked by how much my kids LOVED this show! Each episode is between 10 and 15 minutes, so it still isn't a huge time suck! The episode I thought fit Habit 1 the best was actually Episode 4: "Just the Way I Am."
Day 5: Circle of control sort. We discussed what things we can control, and what things we can't. We sorted the cards into the correct piece of the board. The kids had to think about what they can truly be in charge of - themselves - and how they can be proactive by taking responsibility for all the things in their circle of control, while not stressing about those not on the circle of control.
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