This giveaway is now closed. This month we’re thrilled to give away a complete set of eleven books in the Laugh & Learn series, featuring realistic topics, practical advice, silly jokes, fun illustrations, and a kid-centric point of view. The set includes the updated full-color edition of Bullying Is a Pain in the Brain, a Free Spirit classic that helps kids get and stay “Bully-Proof.”
- Bullying Is a Pain in the Brain
- Cliques, Phonies, & Other Baloney
- Don’t Behave Like You Live in a Cave
- Dude, That’s Rude!
- Get Organized Without Losing It
- How to Do Homework Without Throwing Up
- How to Take the Grrrr Out of Anger
- See You Later, Procrastinator!
- Siblings
- Stand Up to Bullying!
- Stress Can Really Get on Your Nerves!
To Enter: Leave a comment below telling us how you use humor to teach social-emotional skills to children. This giveaway is now closed.
For additional entries, leave a separate comment below for each of the following tasks that you complete:
Each comment counts as a separate entry—that’s four chances to win! Entries must be received by midnight, April 22, 2016.
The winner will be contacted via email on or around April 25, 2016, and will need to respond within 72 hours to claim his or her prize or another winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way affiliated with, administered, or endorsed by Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. Winner must be a U.S. resident, 18 years of age or older.
We welcome your comments and suggestions. Share your comments, stories, and ideas below, or contact us. All comments will be approved before posting, and are subject to our comment and privacy policies.
© 2016 by Free Spirit Publishing. All rights reserved.
Humor can be the best way to get though to someone. Let kids know the little things are not the ned of the world. Teach them to laugh instead of cry. There’s a lot of sadness in the world. I try to lighten the hearts of the kiddos I teach.
I teach preschoolers and we have a few that are bullying. I want to help with that issue before they go into the public school.
I work in Prevention but I’m also a grandparent. These books will help me and my students plus my grandchildren in my work presenting these important subjects both in a classroom or home setting. I believe communication is one of the most important ESL topics to teach. Thank you!
I am not sure who has more fun with humor during counseling lessons! The children love when I “hook” them with my sheepdog puppet, Trusty Rusty. In my Title I elementary school (90% free or reduced lunch population), we are in sore need of more humor- too much drama in these kids’ young lives. We need humor to balance it out, plus it is a great way to discuss social skills without sounding “preachy” all the time!
I love this series of books. I ordered several two years ago and use them in my 6th grade class for those students who need them most. They are great discussion starters and are also useful in our class meeting discussions.
I use role play of possible “silly” everyday scenarios to help children apply strategies presented in therapy. It helps for me to show them no fear for “acting the fool” before I ask them to role play use of the strategy in a similar scenario to check for understanding.
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Humor is a great tool to use when engaging children in conversations about day-to-day situations. In my 5th grade classroom telling stories about have I have made mistakes or embarrassed myself and lived to tell the tale is fun and informative. Being able to laugh at our own human qualities is an important part of accepting ourselves for who we are.
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I love to use games that have fun questions, engaging and fun role-plays in groups, and I actually have two of these books that have been a great way to work with classrooms and siblings and would LOVE to win the remainder of the set!!!!
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Cultivating and using my sense of humor is one of my favorite life skills. My friendships with professional comedians encouraged me to partner with one to teach stand up writing and performance to a former group of students. Along the way, we taught them how to apply specific techniques to conflict management, as well. Being able and willing to laugh – at yourself, at life – is essential to health!
I make an active effort to start each interaction with a smile and seek those laugh-worthy moments to share with the students. Sharing a laugh with students that doesn’t come at the expense of others, is a valuable social skill.
I tell my students funny stories where I learned lessons about different behaviors.
I use books daily for classroom, individual and group counseling and/or parent education. This series would add to my collection and seem like a perfect way to make a connection to students.
Humor helps everyone cope with uncomfortable situations. I try to use humor to let children (and adults) know that life is too short not to see the bright side!
I love the Laugh & learn series and have a few of the items. I like to use humor in most of my interactions with students. I find that humor can be especially effective at lightening more serious conversations.
I use humor throughout the day. Without humor we could not last through the day as humor can break up a tense situation or a bad mood.
Being the behavior person for a K-5 school I feel humor is my MOST important tool in my tool box. Humor relaxes my hardest kids during stressful situations. Teaching with humor breaks down barriers, helping my students feel that they can make a change. Humor can help make a difficult concept (one that they might not like to even hear about) more accepting. Humor lightens the room when the mood is dark and at times hopeless. I find that humor also closes the gap between adults and students, we all laugh the same. When I have a book written with humor I find that it is accepted by the parents faster. I think our lives are all so serious. When it comes to teaching our children life lessons, I feel they retain the concepts when they are taught with a smile and a laugh. Both my students and their parents respond positively to humor. And for that matter, I do too. P.S. I love your books.
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As a school counselor I use humor when doing role-plays with students to help engage them in the lesson.
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I would love to use these for student book clubs and help not only with social and emotional concerns, but also academic.
I teach social- emotional skills for an hour a day to special needs children, many with emotional disorders. We use books and role play alot! I love to laugh and have fun while learning these skills
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I am a therapist and I work with children and their families using these books! I would love to have a set at my office!!
Role playing with silly, off the wall comments helps the kids learn some unique ways to react to bullies.
This would be a valuable tool for our Center. We currently use puppets songs and books to promote our social curriculum.
As a grandmother of nine children, some on the spectrum, others officially diagnosed as ADD, autism, and anxiety, find that I rely on some things I have learned in nursing school. Specifically, Norman Cousins’ book “Anatomy of an Illness”; his main medicine was laughter in large doses. Grandpa and I are the “fun” grandparents that do silly things with the children, like tell corny jokes, tickle them, suggest funny approaches to what they perceive as life ending incidents. We have baked cookies and decorated them as friends they say are teasing or bullying them, and then like the Queen of Hearts in the fairy tale, we bit “off … Their heads!” Parents and teachers can be too close to the situation, but I try to lighten things up, even with silly songs, so everyone can gain perspective and see things in another light. I have just recently discovered you books and they are a good reference for me. Our family would certainly take ideas and put them into practice. Life is serious enough as adults. Children need humor to be happy!
I use silly songs in the classroom to teach social-emotional skills, along with overly dramatic/ridiculous role-playing on how to and not to do things. I would love to be able to add this series to my classroom!
Silly Songs Love them!!
Humor is a great way to connect with people. Everyone loves laughter; it levels the playing field!
I think kids relate to humor, so why not use it for behavior issues. This would be a great resource to use with my gifted students.
Laughter is great in the classroom. I usually laugh at mistakes that I make, this helps the students learn that all mistakes do not need a melt-down.
Hi, This works well with children especially mine with ADD.
i show them examples of my writing mistakes and well all laugh 😉
Humor is a good way to lessen the seriousness of school. It helps the students feel relaxed.
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I am a middle school counselor and also work part-time at a mental health facility. I have found that humor is sometimes the only thing that adolescents will respond as they struggle with stress and mental health issues.
I use humor in multiple ways for children to be able to learn. I think one of the most important things we need to remember in education is to make learning fun! Education has become more challenging with demands and letting kids be kids and have fun is a great tool to not only help them to remember academically, but to also help students remember that academics and learning can be fun and want to learn more because it was fun.
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I absolutely love this book series! I have used several of them for book clubs and I’m excited to see some new titles.
I use humor to get children to think about the words they may use to describe how they are feeling by having them think of a rhyming word of that feeling -” I am angry” becomes “I am smangry.” Often times we will then draw an angry face and what a smangry face might look like.
Children respond to humor. Humor makes them feel good about themselves and puts fun into learning. As a school social worker, I try to encourage children to see the happy and humorous side of life on earth!
Humor is a part of my teaching experience, it keeps the children uplifted and cheerful.
At Nonotuck Community School we have used humor and books to help children moderate the volume of their voices. We put a traffic light decibel reader in a classroom and children began monitoring their own volume. We read Decibella and talked about the different levels of talking. And our director is very fond of telling a made up tale about the Loud family…which gets us all laughing (a little too loudly!)
I use humor to in the classroom by telling the class there is no smiling or no fun or no laughing aloud at this school. Before I know it I have grins and giggles abound!
We don’t currently use humor for social emotional learning – this would help us get started!!!