"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." - Aristotle In many communities today, lack of respect for self and others seems to be the norm and not the exception. As their exposure to the world widens,children learn values from a variety of sources and experiences. Unfortunately, not all of what they learn from their experiences is desirable. As a result, educators, caregivers, and parents are faced with the monumental task of guiding young people to sift and sort through their beliefs and behaviors, so they can make wise choices. This book is a resource for early childhood teachers (preschool to grade three), providing them with a wide variety of strategies to use when planning lessons about social and emotional well-being. The book is not meant to be a student workbook, but rather a springboard for teachers to use to initiate discussion and stimulate creative activities that promote student reflection on the topics being covered. This book was written specifically for classroom teachers; however,other childcare specialists as well as parents can readily use it. ABC's of Anger contains easy-to-read stories involving some aspect of the theme "anger". It provides children with an awareness of differing degrees of anger and helps them explore choices for responding when they are angry. Each story begins with a letter of the alphabet - the first letter of both an animal's name and its behavior. A picture and short story about the character follow as well as a definition of the characteristic being described. These pictures and stories may be photocopied and distributed for younger children to color and for older students to add cartoon speech balloons. The lesson on the facing page includes questions that the teacher may use to initiate discussion. It is hoped, however, that student responses and questions will lead to a more personalized dialogue with the teacher acting as a discussion facilitator. Follow-up activities conclude each lesson, and these, too, may be adapted to suit the needs of the class. A resource chapter at the end of the book further explains the theme words and provides additional questions for classroom use. The stories may be read separately or can be combined into themes, such as trigger words, anger intensity words, solution words, empowering words, and feeling words. The characters in the stories are designed to help students make connections between their own actions and feelings as well as those that they may experience in other children and adults. We hope that this book will challenge children's thinking and provide a nonthreatening means for them to work through feelings,behaviors, and emotions in a beneficial and enjoyable way. | 
