Australia’s favourite

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL)

RESOURCES AND TRAINING FOR:

Including the

Early Years Program Ages 4 – 8

Little Highway Heroes

Primary Years Program School Years 1 to 6

Highway Heroes & more…

www.bestprograms4kids.com

Teachers and Educators Allied Health Professionals Kids and Parents Child Mental Health Therapists

Helen Davidson 0410 387 787 Claire Orange 0438 872 061

What is Social and Emotional Learning?

“It is the process of acquiring the skills to recognise and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, establish positive

relationships, make responsible decisions and handle challenging situations effectively”. CASEL

Social and emotional learning is a continuous process of skill development - both through maturation and explicit instruction - which begins at birth and continues throughout the lifetime. By commencing this learning early through the explicit teaching of selected skills, children have the opportunity to lay down healthy habits of emotional self-management and social engagement. These will impact on every area of their life, including increased academic achievement and greater awareness and understanding of relationships.

Audited, Approved & Aligned

KidsMatter Approved Yes! The Little Highway Heroes and Highway Heroes ™ Curricula are KidsMatter approved resources that tick the boxes for better mental health outcomes across social, emotional and learning resilience in the early years and primary years.

ACARA Aligned The Australian National Curriculum (and those in each state) make provision for teaching children Social and Emotional Learning skills and strategies within the Health and Physical Education component. The comprehensive Highway Heroes ™ Curriculum ticks every requirement for teaching Social and Emotional Learning.

Understanding the BEST Metaphor

The Highway of Life – we’re all on it! We are all travelling along The Highway of Life. And as we travel through the early years, primary school, then high school, perhaps tertiary study, then into the workplace - and even starting our own families, we ALL experience little and big adversities… BUMPS and HAZARDS.

We might be excluded, fail a test, lose a race, experience nastiness, unfairness or bullying…

TOOLS help us to get back on The Highway - which means we are Highway Heroes – by using our TOOLS and dealing with BUMPS. How are you travelling along The Highway of your Life? Do you meet BUMPS and HAZARDS? What TOOLS do you use - or wish that you had to use - to get past those adversities? It’s important, because the younger the age at which we teach children how to identify their thinking (internal dialogue), their feelings - and then then how to manage them - the more successful they will be throughout life.

Travelling The Social,

Emotional and Learning Highways

As children grow and develop, they are learning about themselves and others. The playground and the classroom provide many opportunities to develop these life skills.

In the playground, children learn how to develop close and warm relationships. They also learn that sometimes relationships can experience conflict, and that some behaviours are physically and psychologically damaging. On The Playground Highway, children need TOOLS to develop quality friendships, deal with conflict, tame teasing and stamp out bullying.

In the classroom, children are discovering how they learn, whether they can persist, show grit, be organised, and bounce back from making mistakes. As they travel along The Classroom Highway, children need to learn TOOLS that develop a ‘Growth Mindset’ – that helps them to become lifelong lovers of learning.

Children are also learning about their emotions - what causes them, and how slowly or quickly they can happen; their intensity and also duration. On The Emotional Highway, they need to learn TOOLS that help to name and tame their feelings, to self-calm, self-soothe and manage moods.

Promoting Parent Engagement Providing parents and carers with information AND tools that help children to build social, emotional and learning resilience has a positive and lifelong impact. Parents and carers who know how to do this are empowered - and are able to also model resilience themselves. Help is at hand with practical and effective resources - that do work - and that will guide parents through the Playground BUMPS and HAZARDS. They are The BEST Playground Toolbox series of books, parent workshops and webinars.

The BEST Kids’ & Parents’ Resource

The BEST Playground Toolbox series has 4 Notebooks for children and parents that explore social and emotional well-being in the playground. The Notebooks can be read individually or together as a companion pair, where kids and parents can explore and discuss the concepts and TOOLS.

Kids’ Notebook 4 Beating Bullying & Teasing Explores the ‘FOPL’ (‘Fact of Playground Life’) of bullying and teasing. The differences are clarified, and TOOLS to tame teasing and beat bullying are explored - including cyberbullying.

Parents’ Notebook 4 Beating Bullying & Teasing Whether a child has experienced teasing or bullying - or is the perpetrator - this Notebook establishes the differences, shows how to coach assertiveness and how to help children who might themselves be engaging in bullying. Cyberbullying is explored, and cyber-safety steps identified.

Kids’ Notebook 4 Fixing Friendships Friends and friendships teach children about relationships. It is a life skill to be able to make -and keep - friends and to sort out friendship issues – small or big. This Notebook explores these concepts and teaches TOOLS that grow friendships as well as help to manage conflict.

Parents’ Notebook 4 Fixing Friendships Parents often feel at a loss about how they can help with friendship issues – but not with this Notebook in hand. Effective TOOLS are explored and explained.

The Early Years Kit: Little Highway Heroes Little Highway Heroes is a comprehensive Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum for children in the early years aged 4 years to 8 years old.

Each Little Highway Heroes Kit comes with: • 20 lessons (detailed below) • Coloured teaching resources • 20 sing-along-songs – ready to play on the supplied USB • 20 read-along-books – to complement each lesson • Parent Information handouts • Checklists for the Early Years Learning Framework areas • 8 character puppets - referenced in the songs and books • 1 Sillyness The Speed Wobble puppet

Meet The Early Years family: 8 Hand Puppets

Mark and Amanda – twins who have recently moved to the school

Sally and Sam – travelling along The Playground Highway

Eric and Erin – learning about Supa Thinkin and their feelings on The Emotional Highway

Lainie and Leo – travelling The Classroom Highway; learning to be organised, give effort and persist

And…1 non-gendered character puppet

And then there’s Sillyness The Speed Wobble - who often visits playgrounds, classrooms and homes – in fact everywhere… causing bother and trouble. Have you met Sillyness?

Little Highway Heroes: 4 Curricular Areas, 5 lessons in each: Travelling on The Highway 1. Travelling along The Highway; Beep, Beep, Toot ,Toot 2. BUMPS on The Highway; Little, Medium and Big BUMPS Too 3. Highway TOOLS - Think-Say-Do; Helping Me Know What To Do 4. Supa Thinkin on The Highway; Supa Thinkin Highway Heroes 5. Calming Down on The Highway; Highway Heroes The Way To Go

Travelling on The Playground Highway 1. Friendly Me and You; The Friendliness Think-Say-Do TOOL 2. Joining In, Me and You; The Joining In Think-Say-Do TOOL 3. I Care About You and Me; Growing Empathy 4. Sticking Up 4 Me; The Sticking Up 4 Me Think-Say-Do TOOL 5. I’m a Playground Supa Thinker; The Supa Thinkin TOOL

Travelling on The Emotional Highway 1. Feelings, Yours and Mine; Feelings Are What We Have Inside 2. Calming Down Thinkin; Supa Thinkin And Happy Feelings 3. Calming Down Breathing; Bubble Breathing 4. Bossyness The Bulldozer; Comes Out To Play 5. Sillyness The Speed Wobble; Comes To Visit

Travelling on The Classroom Highway 1. The Learning Think-Say-Do TOOL; Focusing, Listening & Learning 2. Sillyness The Speed Wobble; Visits The Classroom 3. Confident You and Confident Me; We Can Do It! 4. Resilient Supa Thinkers; Bouncing Up and Bouncing Back 5. Getting Going; Chugging Along The Classroom Highway

Targetting children’s mental health and well-being in the early years sets up positive pathways to a happy and successful adult life. The BEST Programs 4 Kids’ Little Highway Heroes makes this straight forward, fun and very achievable.

“…Improve children’s mental health by building a sense of belonging and connection for children, assisting with the development of children’s social and emotional skills, and strengthening relationships with important people in their lives”. Kids Matter

The Primary School Years: Highway Heroes Highway Heroes; Smart Life Skills 4 Kids is a comprehensive resource for the whole school, the classroom and for individual or group therapy.

4 Modules • Module 1 Sticking Up 4 Me; Beating Bullying and Taming

Teasing • Module 2 Connecting 4 Friendships; Playground Resilience and

Wisdom • Module 3 Tricks 4 Getting Things Done; The Secrets of Staying-

power and Grit • Module 4 Strategies 4 Managing Me; Mood Management and

Resilience

Each Module is in school levels Years 1-3 and Years 4-6, with increasing demand for independent problem solving and more complex concepts in the Years 4-6 Modules. Each lesson is fully resourced and takes 50 minutes to teach.

Each Module includes: • 1 introductory lesson to The Highway metaphor, Parent

Information and children’s Home Activity • 5 Lesson Plans – a brief lesson overview with outcome

statements (detailed below) • 5 Lesson Outlines – a detailed/scripted expansion of the

Lesson Plan, with a theoretical overview • Icebreaker Activities (for unfamiliar groups of children) • 5 Parent Information handouts • 5 children’s Home Activities • Pitstop Checklists for leaders, parents and children to

complete - pre and post – the implementation of Highway Heroes

• Coloured teaching resources

Module 1 Sticking Up 4 Me; Beating Bullying & Taming Teasing 1. Identifying Bullying 2. The PIGS Bullying Choices 3. Types of Bullying and Straight Talk (Yr 4-6 includes cyber-bullying) 4. Taming Teasing 5. The Triple A’s 4 Teasing

Module 2 Connecting 4 Friendships; Playground Resilience & Wisdom

1. Friends and The Friendliness SPICE 2. The Friendliness SPICE 3. The Triple A’s 4 Refusals to Play 4. The Triple A’s 4 Friendship Flare Ups 5. Assert with Straight Talk

Module 3 Tricks 4 Getting Things Done; The Secrets of Staying-power and Grit

1. Filling The CPR Learning Tank 2. The Triple A’s 4 Getting Things Done 3. The Triple A’s of Approach and Apply 4. www.goalsetting.com 5. Off-Track Thinking (Mistakes, comparison and perfectionism)

Module 4 Strategies 4 Managing Me; Mood Management and Resilience

1. Feelings, Moods and The Emotional Highway 2. Mood, Maps and Drivers 3. Thinking About Your Thinking – The Thinking Traffic Lanes 4. The Triple B’s 4 Calming Down 5. Resilient Me on The Emotional Highway

The 4 Modules teach 33 skills/TOOLS for self-management and building resilience at home, in the playground and in the classroom.

“Giving our children and teens real life skills is the best way to build their resilience and coping skills - I really like the resources from BEST Programs 4 Kids - that both parents, teachers and therapists can use!” Maggie Dent, Australian parenting expert.

Playground Professors

A Social and Emotional Well-being Expert Incursion Service

For schools and organisations, with the express purpose of:

• Introducing teachers and therapists to teaching Social and Emotional Learning in a supportive, fun and interactive context

• Introducing children to their own Social, Emotional and Learning journey in a fun and memorable way

• Assisting schools to problem solve social, emotional and learning issues through demonstrating best practice, with a simple and reproducible methodology

• Activating Highway Heroes resources for those schools who already have the Modules (although this is not a pre-requisite for the Incursion Service)

Playground Professors provide schools and organisations with the opportunity to see Social and Emotional Learning in action.

Sessions target hot topics for schools - including friends and friendships, teasing and bullying, developing emotional self-regulation and resilience - as well as focusing on growing grit, persistence and ‘getting it done’ strategies for the classroom.

Playground Professors are highly trained and skilled professionals, able to work with small or large groups, to facilitate the positive introduction and application of Social and Emotional Well-being TOOLS.

Workshops and Talking Topics

For your next workshop, seminar or conference, our highly trained facilitators - or Claire and Helen, authors of Highway Heroes – can speak inspiringly on a range of topics - to a range of audiences. BEST Programs 4 Kids’ facilitators are renowned for their engaging, passionate presentations at parent forums, professional learning days, seminars and conferences.

Social and emotional well-being incorporates playground and classroom thinking and behaviours that grows a child’s emotional intelligence. Here are just some of the popular Workshops topics for Children, Parents, Educators and Health Professionals:

• Bullying and Teasing • Friends and Friendships • Learning to Learn • Managing BIG Feelings

At BEST Programs 4 Kids we pride ourselves on bringing outstanding Workshops and learning. We know that kids, parents, educators and health professionals often know about serious issues like teasing and bullying, friendship issues in children, children who disconnect from their learning but don’t often have a clear, direct and explicit way to target these behaviours to bring about positive and lasting change.

Let us be part of your solutions-focused approach to growing children’s social and emotional well-being with REAL solutions and a practical approach to sharing information and skills. We invite you to bring your next event to life with an informative, evidence-based exploration of children’s Social, Emotional and Learning Well-being.

“Honestly, the best Workshop I’ve been to in years – and I’ve been in education for 25 years! Thank you, and I look forward to hearing more.” JS, Primary School Principal, Western Australia

Authors, Speakers, Therapists

BEST Programs 4 Kids was founded by Helen Davidson and Claire Orange, Allied Health Professionals – both with extensive clinical experience in children’s emotional well-being. Helen and Claire are passionate about promoting greater awareness and inclusion of best practices in preventative children’s mental health.

Helen and Claire have authored Little Highway Heroes, Highway Heroes and The BEST Playground Toolbox series. They are popular presenters throughout Australia and internationally.

Helen Davidson: Assoc. OT, Masters Social Science (Counselling), Dip. Family Therapy

Claire Orange: B Sci Sp & Hearing (Hons), Counsellor, Accred. Resilience Trainer

Contact Details For more details about any of the programs, resources or training, please go to www.bestprograms4kids.com. Send us an email at info@bestprograms4kids.com or phone:

Helen Davidson 0410 387 787 Claire Orange 0438 872 061

We welcome opportunities to connect with the communities we support. Please email or call if we can assist your community or organisation. We look forward to hearing from you soon!