Mrs. Coomber's Kinderland

I often tells parents that the most important skills their child will learn in kindergarten are social and emotional. the ability to get along and regulate emotions will help them be more successful later in school than cramming in academic skills in the early years.

In the last few years of teaching (since 2020), I have seen the need for explicitly teaching these skills grow. In my classroom, the word perseverance is uttered nearly every day. My puppets, Dragon and Pirate, often get frustrated and break down when their academic work seems too hard. The students are then tasked with encouraging these puppets and sharing their own strategies to help.

Just this week, I had two students crumble up their papers in frustration when their writing or drawing was not perfect. In one case, the student was not able to move forward because he did not like how close he drew lines across his paper. He then started coloring so hard that a small hole formed. finally, he crumpled his paper up and said he would not do his work. Of course, there was much encouragement in between all of those phases of frustration, but he was too overwhelmed to move through it, and time ran out. I told him that it’s okay. We all have days or times that are hard, and sometimes we need to just take some time and come back to it.

When he returned to school in the morning, I put his paper on his table and said that sometimes making a mistake leads to a new idea. I said I noticed the hole in his paper and wondered what it could be. Within a few minutes, he came up with the idea that it was a secret door and then wrote a sentence to go with his illustration.

When class started, I read the book Beautiful Oops! by Barney Saltzberg. The kids love this book. Some pages pop out, some have flaps that reveal new images, and there is so much color and imagination throughout the illustrations.

Most importantly, the book demonstrates a growth mindset, or perseverance, as we talk about it in my classroom. As soon as I finished reading, I told the class that I had just witnessed an example of a “beautiful oops.” I called this student up to the front of the class, and he proudly shared his illustration and writing with the group. This student loves to stand up in front of the group. It was wonderful to see a frustration turn into a model moment of success!