(bright acoustic guitar music) - Hello, little learners.

Welcome back to our Pre-K and TK classroom with Mrs. Lara.

That's me.

Hello!

We have some exciting things to do today.

We're gonna learn some foundational skills about reading, and more importantly, we're gonna learn about ourselves, how we feel.

That's what we're studying this week, all about feelings.

So today is day one of the five days we'll be doing that study.

One on top.

So, I want you to stick with me till the very end because guess what?

We're gonna use markers, paper, and we're gonna make a worry monster!

Doesn't that sound exciting?

Now before we get to our learning, I wanna share a song with you about feelings.

Now, you'll remember, feelings are something that happen inside of your body and they might make you act a certain way.

Like, if you're angry, your eyebrows might get close together and your body might get tight, and your arms might get like this.

But if you're happy, your whole face lights up and a big smile and your eyes are bright.

So to help you remember some of those feeling words, here's our song.

It goes like this.

♪ Happy, proud, surprised, and sad ♪ ♪ Anxious, calm, excited, mad ♪ ♪ Upset, shocked, confused, and glut ♪ ♪ These are some emotions ♪ ♪ Lonely, thankful, safe, and shy ♪ ♪ Nervous, silly, terrified ♪ ♪ Cheerful, fearful, sometimes tearful ♪ ♪ These are some emotions ♪ Now emotions is another word for feelings.

Now, in Spanish, emotions is emociones.

You know, I love to share my love of Spanish with you.

So let's sing our song, but in Spanish this time.

A little bit different tune.

It goes like this.

(Mrs. Lara singing in foreign language) Let's try it one more time.

(Mrs. Lara singing in foreign language) That means heart.

(Mrs. Lara singing in foreign language) By the end of the week, I'm gonna have you singing that song.

Now, right now, we're gonna learn some new vocabulary words, my favorite part.

Behind this door, here we go.

Three words for us to know.

This is from our book, which is "Ruby Finds a Worry," and I'll share it in just a minute.

But our first word is worry.

Can you say that word with me?

Worry.

It's special letter W. It means to think about problems or fears.

You feel stress.

Remember, we talked about stress.

You just feel not so great.

You're wondering, what's gonna happen next?

And you don't think it's gonna be something good.

The next word is the word enormous.

Enormous.

Can you say it with me?

E-nor-mous.

It's special letter E and enormous has some hand movements like this.

Enormous.

It means really, really big, large in size, and we'll see in our book a picture of something that's enormous.

Our last word is a funny word and it's called hover.

You say it with me.

Hover.

Special letter H. Hover means you remain in one place in the air, so like a helicopter might hover over the ground.

That means it's not really moving.

It's in the air, but it's staying in one place.

I wonder how the word hover is going to be used in our story.

So let's bring out our book and find out.

Here it is.

Nice and bright.

Our book "Ruby Finds a Worry."

Now look at the front cover.

Here's Ruby, our character, and she has her hand like this.

And behind her is a little yellow scribble.

I wonder if that's the worry.

The author is Tom Percival and he does a lot of books about feelings.

So let's open this up and read it together.

There's Ruby.

Oh, she looks so happy here.

I hope she stays that way.

"Ruby Finds a Worry."

Ruby loved being Ruby.

There she is in her polka dot dress and she's playing.

She loved to swing up high!

There she is swinging in her tights.

I think she seems very happy.

And she loved to explore wild, far away places.

I think these places were in her imagination 'cause look.

It looks like she's in a jungle, a forest with lots of insects around her.

Sometimes she went all the way to the very bottom of the garden.

Ruby was perfectly happy!

Until one day.

Oh no.

I can't look!

What's gonna happen to Ruby?

Is it bad?

Is it really bad?

It's the yellow squiggle.

Ruby discovered a worry.

It wasn't a very big worry.

So there she is, looking.

And there's the worry.

In fact, it was so small that at first, Ruby hardly noticed it.

So there she is, eating her ice cream, and the worry is right next to her, but it is quite small, right?

But then, the worry started to grow.

Each day, it got a little bit bigger.

So there it is.

It started off really small, easy to ignore, and then it got so big that it's now sharing a chair with her.

Oh no.

It just would not leave her alone!

So when Ruby was trying to play in her dinosaur box, there was the worry right behind her, almost crowding her out.

It was there at breakfast, staring at her over the cereal box, and it was still there at night when she brushed her teeth.

That worry does not want to leave Ruby alone.

What should Ruby do?

Should she keep ignoring the worry, just made it bigger.

The funny thing was that no one else could see Ruby's worry, not even her teacher.

So there's her teacher.

Ruby pretended that she couldn't see it either.

Now, I want you to think.

Her face does not look happy anymore.

She is getting more and more sad.

She tried to carry on as if everything was normal, but it just wasn't!

The worry was always there, stopping her from doing the things that she loved.

So you remember, at the beginning of this story, it said that Ruby loved to swing high, but now, she's barely swinging at all.

Ruby wondered if the worry would ever go away.

What if it didn't?

What if it stayed with her forever?

Ruby didn't realize it, but as she was doing, the worst thing you could ever do with a worry, that's what she was doing.

She was worrying about the worry.

She's saying, that's the worst thing you could ever do.

Now, the worry was enormous!

Remember we learned that word?

It means really, really big.

Look at the worry.

It's even bigger than Ruby.

So she ignored it.

She tried to pretend that she didn't see it and it just kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

It could barely fit in the kitchen at dinnertime.

It filled up half the school bus.

And it took up the whole row in the movie theater.

The worry became the only thing that Ruby could think about and it seemed like she would never feel happy again.

So she can't seem to escape her worry.

It doesn't seem like Ruby knows what to do.

Do you know what to do when you have a worry that big?

Then one day, something unexpected happened.

Ruby noticed a boy sitting alone at the park.

He looked how she felt, sad.

So look.

There's the boy in the park.

And what do you notice with him?

It looks like Ruby's worry, doesn't it?

But a different color.

And then, she noticed something else, something hovering next to him.

Could it be a worry?

So is this a worry?

And remember, we talked about hovering.

That means it's in the air, but it's staying right next to him in place.

It was!

It was a worry!

Ruby realize that she wasn't the only person with a worry after all.

Other people had them, too.

She asked the boy what was on his mind, and as he told her, the strangest thing started to happen.

What do you think is gonna happen?

His worry began to shrink.

Now, what made the worry shrink?

Let's read that part again.

It said, she asked the boy what was on his mind, and as he told her, the strangest thing happened.

The worry started to shrink.

So it looks like maybe talking about it will shrink the worry.

Then, Ruby did the best thing you can ever do if you have a worry.

She talked about it.

As the words tumbled out, Ruby's worry began to shrink until it was barely there at all.

Soon, both of their worries were gone.

So both the boy and Ruby talked about their worries and then poof, disappeared.

Finally, Ruby felt like herself again.

Of course, that wasn't the last time she ever had a worry.

Everyone gets them from time to time, but now that she knew how to get rid of them, they never hung around for long.

The end.

I love this book about Ruby and her worry because it reminds me that when I'm worried or stressed or feeling like something bad is gonna happen, all I have to do is talk about it.

And then the worry goes away.

So I hope that you enjoyed that book and that you check out other books about feelings and worry in your local library or in the Sora app.

Right now, we're gonna talk a little bit about what to do when you do have a worry or a strong feeling besides talk about it.

Let's say that you're all by yourself and you're just feeling very stressed.

What do you do?

Well, I'm gonna teach you.

It says what to do with a worry.

Three things.

The first one is you need to stop.

So let's say that you're pacing back and forth, walking around, or you're in a ball in the corner biting your teeth, you need to stop.

Next thing is, you need to name your feeling.

So just like Ruby when she tried to pretend that her worry wasn't there, you need to turn around and face your feeling.

You need to say, I am feeling worried, or I am feeling sad, or mad, or another strong feeling.

The third thing is you need to take five deep belly breaths.

So you can lock your hands right in here, put them on your belly, and take five breaths.

Now, I like to pretend that I'm gonna turn five years old and blow out each candle as I take a breath.

You like my finger candles?

Get yours out because now it's time to practice our belly breaths.

Here we go.

Five fingers.

Each time I take a breath, one finger or a candle is gonna go down.

Here we go.

(Mrs. Lara breathing deeply) That's two.

Three left.

(Mrs. Lara breathing deeply) That's four.

Now I want five.

How many more breaths do I have to take?

One, that's right.

(Mrs. Lara breathing deeply) And you can also pretend that you're the Big Bad Wolf and you're blowing down houses and that'll make you blow extra deep.

So, whenever you have a strong feeling, you can practice that.

Stopping, naming your feeling, and taking belly breaths, five or more or as many as you need until you feel the worry, the anger, the sadness disappear, poof, like in our story.

Now, right now, we're gonna go over to our "Project Place" because we're gonna do something else that's great for when you're feeling strong worries.

A little bit of art.

So let's walk over here and I'll tell you the materials we'll need.

So this is a very simple activity and that means it doesn't need a lot of materials.

So what you'll need is some paper, some markers, and you know I have my bin full of markers here, and then you're going to need just your imagination.

I'm using a clipboard today so that you can see what I'm going to draw.

We are going to draw a worry monster.

So for our worry monster, we're gonna need to think of what kind of eyes our worry monster is going to have.

So you'll remember in the story, the worry monster started out very small with Ruby, but then it got enormous, didn't it?

So I think I'm gonna make some enormous eyes.

So let's see.

I'm gonna get some scratch paper and I'm gonna draw some eyes.

How many eyes do we have?

One, two.

That's right.

And we have something inside of our eyes called pupils, so I'm gonna draw a couple of options for us.

So there are our eyes.

Maybe our worry is angry, so I'm gonna draw my eyebrows that look like this, like triangles coming in.

Maybe this is the eyes I want for my worry monster.

So let me see.

That's one option.

Next, maybe I'll do two ovals, the pupils, I'll draw some eye, they're more worried looking like this.

Look how the eyebrows make such a huge difference.

And maybe a little bit underneath like that.

Don't they look worried?

While these look angry.

Maybe I'll do that, but maybe I'll draw eyes, two ovals with some pupils, that are more, let's see, like this, really thick eyebrowed like that.

Maybe it's just one.

So you can vary the thickness of your eyebrows.

Maybe that's gonna be my worry monster.

And I'll draw him like that.

Which ones do you think I should use?

Now, you could come up with any design that you want.

Just use some scratch paper and kind of sketch out some ideas before you draw them on your worry monster.

I think I'm gonna use this one because when I get worried, sometimes I get angry because I don't wanna be worried.

I want to be happy.

And I get angry when I can't control it or don't know how.

So here are my eyes, so two ovals if you're following along.

Your eyes do not have to look like mine.

You can make them different sizes, they can look silly if you want, whatever reminds you of worry.

Next, my eyebrows are gonna come in, remember?

Just like that.

Oh, look how mad they are.

And that's how I feel when I get worried.

Now, next, we're going to draw some scribbles and lines all around, just like in Ruby's case.

It just looked like a big bundle.

And isn't that how your body feels when you're worried?

You feel all tense and crumbled up in your head.

So, I'm gonna grab another scratch paper right here and I'm going to practice making some lines.

So lines can be many different things.

They can be straight lines just like that, they can be dotted lines or broken up lines like that, so it's dot, dot.

Let's see, line, line.

We can do zig-zags.

Up and down, they look like mountains.

Curvy lines.

And you can even make them closer together.

Or you can even do, let's see, just any kind of organic shape line that just kind of goes around and around and any shape you want.

And you could even make them thick, just like we did with our eyebrows.

Thick line and thin line like this.

Now, I saw this idea online to make your worry monster by an art teacher and she actually recommends sketching out your design like this first so we have an idea of what our worry monster's gonna look like.

So here are our lines and I'm gonna pick a color.

Maybe I'll do green.

Green for grow because when I worry, I remind myself that any problem that I face, I can grow and learn from it.

And green represents grass and flowers to me, all things that grow.

So I think I'm gonna do this and a zig-zag line.

I'm gonna do it all right here.

Our worry monster is starting to take shape.

And as you're doing it, you're gonna start to feel like your body is less tense because art has the ability to do that.

Maybe next, I'm gonna use a red color because red is a hot, warm color and that's what I feel when I'm worried.

I feel warm and hot, almost angry.

And for me, anger, that is lines.

Thick lines.

I'm gonna do thick lines coming out of my worry monster like this.

Now, when I get worried, I try to do those steps where I stop and I name my feelings and then I take my belly breaths because you cannot make good decisions, do anything when you're worried and all balled up.

So, so far I have green and red.

I wonder what colors you're using to make your worry monster.

I'm gonna use a purple next because it reminds me of being creative.

That means thinking of solutions in a different way and problems in a different way.

And I think I'm going to use my bumpy lines.

So I'm gonna do it all the way around like this.

Have you ever been worried and thought, what am I going to do with this problem?

But then all of a sudden, as you calm down, the solution comes to you.

Or are you one of those that worries about your worry?

Sometimes I do that, too.

Let's see.

Let's get another color.

Maybe just orange.

Orange because I love the color orange and it's mom and stepdad's favorite color.

So when I worry, I like to think of the people I love.

And I'm gonna do an organic kind of curvy shape around my worry monster.

Look, it's starting to take shape.

It's looking just like in the story with Ruby, isn't it?

All the way around.

All of a sudden, as I'm doing this, I'm reminding myself not to worry about my worries and they're starting to shrink.

I hope that happens when you try this activity.

Let's do now brown.

Brown, the color of dirt.

And we'll do one more line.

Let's see.

I think I'm going to do the broken lines.

I'm gonna use some broken lines here all the way around.

Now this is process art, so the process itself is as valuable as the end product.

That's the best kind of art.

So here is my worry monster.

You know what?

Doesn't seem so bad.

I think I can handle it.

What do you think?

That's right.

I would just need to talk to someone, and then poof, my worry monster would go away.

So I hope that you try this.

And for those of you entering kindergarten next year, remember that writing is a big piece of the curriculum.

So after I finish this art, I might attach a little piece of paper at the bottom and use the prompt, what do you worry about, to get more writing and oral language out of your student.

So give this one a try.

I'm gonna leave you with a few recommended books.

Around this time of year, when things are ending and students are realizing, "What?

My teacher isn't gonna be my teacher forever?

I have to go to a new classroom?

I get to take this thing called summer break?"

There's a lot of anxiety and worry that builds, so talking about school in a humorous way can help, getting them excited for what's to come.

So I always turn to my old friend, "Pete the Cat."

Here he is, rocking in my school shoes.

And if you have access to the internet, they have wonderful songs that go with this book.

So getting your students to talk about, you know, being on the school bus in kindergarten, are there cats in kindergarten, what shoes might they wear?

We'll get them thinking about their classroom and what's ahead versus what they're leaving behind.

So I hope that you check out this "Pete the Cat" story.

I have one more for you.

This one is called "We Don't Eat Our Classmates" and I love this one because it has dinosaur characters.

And as you can see, it talks about all the things that happen in school and all the routines and procedures, what to do, and of course, what not to do.

Swallowing a classmate, don't wanna do that.

Looks like our first day of our feeling study is coming to an end.

So of course, I'm gonna send you at home with a big squeeze like this.

(Mrs. Lara growling) And a big smooch.

I hope that you read and that you keep your worry monsters small this week.

Goodbye, boys and girls.

(bright acoustic guitar music)