Growth Mindset

I have to be honest, I hadn't heard this phrase until I attended my daughter's Kindergarten curriculum night last year.  But after hearing it, and doing a little research, I wondered where it had been all my life!  A person with a growth mindset believes that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.  Instead of "I can't read!" they might think "I can't read YET." I have put together a list of excellent picture books that help support a growth mindset.  These are great books to have in your general home library, and also support lots of fun extension activities.  We were recently given a copy of the Growth Mindset print-ables from Big Life Journal to review.

We have done two activities so far.  First we read Your Fantastic Elastic Brain: Stretch It, Shape It to go along with the I Can Grow My Brain poster activity.  It was at a great level for my six-year old and my three year old listened to the story and helped us color.  We also read a favorite, Beautiful Oops!, and followed it up with the Take Chances, Keep Going worksheet where we got to finish the drawings left by raccoon and fox.

Here is a description of the Growth Mindset Printable Set from their website:  "This bundle of Growth Mindset Printables Set from Big Life Journal is designed to help children develop the mindset and skills they need to realize their full potential.  It's great for ages 5-11. This printable kit is different from Big Life Journal, none of the materials overlap.  The dynamic worksheets, activities, posters and coloring pages are designed to help children truly understand that they have the capacity to learn anything!  The colorful and engaging activities teach kids to pick themselves up after they fall down, find strategies to apply to challenging tasks, and persevere when learning gets tough.  The kit also contains valuable growth mindset handouts and guides for parents and teachers."

You can see my full video review here.

Hold my place!

We have a lot of books in our house, even though we use the library multiple times a week.  I try to go through periodically and "weed" out some that we don't NEED.  But we still have a lot.  For the most part I don't mind but it makes me happiest when they're at least organized.  The kids pull out lots of books and read them,which makes my momma heart happy, but they don't put them back very nicely, which, well, you know...  :)  I spent a lot of time sorting the books and finding ways to make it easier to access what we want and put them all back where they go and where there's room for them.  I have a pretty good system down in the kids' room and our play room, but the books in the living room were still giving us problems.  Target Dollar Spot to the rescue!  I've been drooling over YouTube videos of all of the new learning items people are finding at their local stores.  Luckily, my store hasn't stocked a lot yet, which is helping my fairly non-existent self restraint.  I did find these little beauties for $1 each.  As soon as I saw them I knew that they would be perfect. 

I believe they are meant to be pointers for teachers to use at the board with their students.  But we're using them as shelf markers!  When they pick out a book, they slide a shelf marker in its place.  When they bring the book back, they know right where it goes.  Of course, my kids think they're the coolest things ever.  Even if they don't become master shelvers, they are beginning to understand the concept of putting books back where they go so that we can find them again later.  I think we might start taking them to the library with us, as well. 

Library Scavenger Hunt

If you read my post about summer reading, you may remember me mentioning our library scavenger hunt cards.  I created these cards to use with my six year old this summer to help encourage her to spend time selecting books at the library before she plays.  I also want to begin to teach her about how things are organized in our library, including the Dewey Decimal System.  She has a lot of fun with these cards.  I have a huge pile of them that I printed on card stock and laminated.  She picks one from the pile on our weekly library trip.  We use a dry erase marker to check off what she finds. You can find the cards available here in my TeachersPayTeachers store.   As I mentioned in my previous post, I love that we have such play-centered libraries at our disposal, but I wanted to make sure that we were also slowing down a little bit to appreciate all of the books available to us as well.  I created around thirty cards that cover different Dewey numbers, as well as topics without their Dewey number.  I also created a "cheat sheet" bookmark with the Dewey categories on it for us to use as we're learning.

Before I introduced the cards for the first time, we read the book Do You Know Dewey?: Exploring the Dewey Decimal System to learn a little about the types of non-fiction and how they are organized in the public library.  For good measure, we also talked a little bit about how we should treat books, especially those that we're borrowing.  So far it's been a hit and she asks for the scavenger hunt card if I forget to mention it.  Our summer reading is going great and we're checking out lots of new and interesting books we might never have found before!