#569. I Can Choose

Social Studies, level: Elementary
Posted Sat Aug 15 13:26:19 PDT 1998 by Georgia Hedrick (saraw@reno.quik.com).
Washoe County School District/ First grade, Reno, NV USA
Materials Required: sheets of white cardboard to draw the various faces showing emotions
Activity Time: 30 minutes
Concepts Taught: You are in charge of yourself--nobody makes you do anything

Have six sheets of white paper for each child. Either, predraw the circle on each, or allow the child to draw a free hand circle on each paper. Now--there will be six emotions shown: happy, sad, anger, thoughtfulness, confusion and laughter.

How to draw each: smiling face:bent line with tips upward for mouth, eyes bent like setting suns, same sort of line for nose.
sad face: reverse the lines from the smiling face as in--make the mouth curve down, make the eyes look like bottom of rocking chair bent lines, but tilted. Make eyebrows with the same sort of bent. Add a tear out of each eye.
laughing face: make a huge bent line with a connected bent line so it looks like a big bird's nest. Put the nose ON TOP OF THE HEAD so it looks like the face is one big laugh.
angry face: make a big w with dots, one on either side of the outer wing of the w, right next to the line and very tiny. Make a small sharp edged v for a nose. Make a zigzag mouth or even an upsidedown v for the mouth.
Reasoning or thinking face: make the eyes as O's and put the pupils into the top section of the O, so the irises are looking upward. Make bent lines for eyebrows but way up toward the top of the head. Make an O for the nose. For the mouth, just make the letter s stretched out and laying on its side.

NOW, that you have the drawings, teach the rap poem with kids repeating a line at a time after you. After a few practices, have kids hold up the correct drawing with the poem's words.

I can Choose
I can Choose
I can choose to win or lose.(thumbs up, thumbs down)
I can smile or I can frown (happy face, sad face)
I can go on up or down.(thumbs up, thumbs down)
I can smile and just say Hi (happy face)
Or, I can simply walk on by.
I can choose to cry and pout, (sad face)
Or, I can choose to laugh it out. (laughing face)
I can choose to rage and roar, (angry face)
Or, I can choose to reason more. (thoughtful face)

It's up to me (have kids point to themselves with thumb)
Just how I'll be...cuz...
I'M in charge of (again, thumb-point to self)
the 'CHOOSE' in me!!

You, as teacher, decides how much discussion is needed to explain all the different emotions.

Be sure you do this with a steady rap beat.