This giveaway is now closed. This month we’re thrilled to give away a complete set of the 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 newly revised and updated full-color editions of Cliques, Phonies & Other Baloney and Stress Can Really Get on Your Nerves. One lucky reader will win:
- 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 you complete:
Each comment counts as a separate entry—that’s four chances to win! Entries must be received by midnight, April 20, 2018.
The winner will be contacted via email on or around April 23, 2018, 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 US 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.
© 2018 by Free Spirit Publishing. All rights reserved.
One of the ways I like to use humor is just by getting on the other kiddos level – sometimes I will use jokes as an ice breaker, I will come up with a silly rap and dance relating to the topic we are talking about, dress up as certain things, etc. It is a good way for kids to see that you a positive person in their life, just by adding a little humor and silliness.
As a future educator, we have to think of different, interesting and fun ways to get important information to our students. Humor is a good way to start, if you’re laughing and having fun so will the students! Lead by example. If you focus on the right good behaviors, correct the wrong negative behaviors you can teach students emotional skills. Social skills are communicating with another person. Playing social games and having students interact, with not just their table mates, but also students who they may not play or talk with is a great way to get the class as a whole to interact.
This is just a comment about how to use humour with students. Being able to laugh or joke with a student shows the student that you understand them, you get them. It can also be a way that students, who have trouble talking about hard things, like their feelings, are able to express themselves. It teaches boundaries, social norms, and one way of conflict resolution. It provides students with a way to express their identify and diversity. Used with caring and sensitive adults, humour is a great tool to building relationships and teaching students skills.
My wife and I used humor and relating our funny experiences as a learning opportunities for our grandchildren. That way they not only absorbed the messages but also remembered those for a long time as having positive relevance in their own lives.
The children I teach vary in age from 2 years old to 10 years old. The younger kids really enjoy the puppets and the older children like acting out senerios. Each time it brings a little humor to the lesson and the children make the connection between the lesson and their daily lives.
When I am silly with the students and can make them smile it helps them relax and we are able to build a relationship since I only see them once a week for class or sometimes once a month for class. I also use puppets and the “puppets” can be extra silly – the students really love that!
When I work with middle school age children, humor is probably my most valuable asset. It can turn them from indifferent to engaged!
Getting silly gets the kids attention, so teaching through humor is a great way to make a concept stick.
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Building a relationship through humor is a great place to start! These books help build that connection!
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Reading funny books and making funny faces and acting out parts of the book
I use when recounting stories of my own childhood to illuminate my point and engage my children. I recently was humorously demonstrating how I kept making mistakes trying to write a number two correctly and it helped my child see that it is common and ok to make mistakes!
I like to use humorous books with the younger grades. They love them and remember them!
I walk into a classroom with an orange bandana hanging over my eyes and express increasing frustration because “I can’t see anything but ORANGE!” I ask for help from the pre-kindergarten students to help me calm down so that I can solve the problem.
Humor is a great tool to relax a client and to help clients to see a hope.
I like to use funny voices or expressions while reading or teaching to keep children amused and interested.
Following directions is a difficult task for some of my two and three year olds, so I often use humor to gain their full attention while I model what is expected of them. This works great, and the children have a blast completing their tasks by copying what I did, or they use their own silly behaviors.
Laughter is a common occurrence in my classroom! I am an EL teacher. I am teaching my students the English language and they are teaching me their languages! It is very comical! We have a great time learning and laughing with each other. Laughter and smiles are universal. No translation is needed. Comedy is an easy and fun way to teach how the English language has so many meanings for just one word!
I think humor is a ‘common language’- kids can understand it. Teaching the big stuff (touchy feely emotions) can be difficult but making it light and silly takes the scary and sad away for a bit. You can convey the message and practice it in a non-threatening way so when it happens for real kids know how to react.
I am a school counselor and I use laughter as a coping skill. I tell my students that reading a joke book or just simply forcing yourself to laugh will help in boosting your mood. Laughter is free resource to use in helping mental health!!
I use humor and literacy in my classroom to connect with kids and make a lasting impression!
Making a joke out of making a mistake is a good way to teach social-emotional skills using humor. Just being able to laugh good-naturedly at yourself is good regarding your errors or oddities. When a child is happy and makes you laugh, their peers are less likely to “mean tease” them about their mistakes or differences. If a child comes to me upset or embarrassed about something they did, I try to tell them a similar personally story about myself using humor to lighten the moment and encourage the child that it is OK. They can laugh at their mistakes, learn from them and move on.
Humor is a great ice breaker and a great first step in building relationships. I usually start with a personal story where I reveal some of my foibles to the students. Such as making comments that are taken not as I intended and how I had to repair the damage it caused.
Exaggerating emotional responses when describing them usually makes children laugh. When they are laughing, they remember more about what you did and what you said. They also really have fun acting out emotions and then working to figure out ways to handle big feelings.
Role playing and/or video modeling with myself, other adults or older students being the different roles of situations. We can laugh at ourselves being over the top but then learn and reflect on how those situations really happen and makes us feel.
Humor is universal in my opinion. Everyone loves to laugh. It makes us feel good. With that being said, I use humor in my classroom for every situation. Humor engages my students. It relieves stress, and for me, it has created a bond with each one of them that I hope they are reminded of 20 years from now because it made an impact. I have some sort of inside joke with each student. We laugh at everything! Humor is something that cannot be taught, but is retained for years in our hearts!
We use jokes as a thinking tool. Decoding and understanding content is a major comprehension skill that should be covered in humor!
Love this series! Would love to use in my role as school social worker.
Students relate well to humor and they tend to be more engaged when the topic is approached in a humorous way. Also, some topics are difficult to discuss and humor helps break the ice.
Using humor to build relationships with the students helps to engage them in serious topics. Telling stories about myself and how I have handled situations and asking students to recall funny stories about themselves. When students hear that we as adults have gone through the same situation sometimes opens up the students mindset to see we are all humans, and nobody is perfect but we can all use the same strategies to work through issues.
I use humor in my social skills groups, so the students can begin to learn without pressure put upon them. I would LOVE to have all of these books.
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Laughing makes everything more fun!
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I use humor daily to build relationships and mentor to my RtI behavior students! Humor allows students to bond with you and meet their goals in a positive way!
Humor is a great preventive resource to pump those calming hormones into the brain and lower stress – and we all know how the stress hormones can result in emotion and behavior explosions. Thinking of some funny nonsense words to replace curse words that children sometimes pick up from their adult “role-models” can help calm the mood of the moment and move children on to solving the problem that elevated the emotions in the first place.
Love all of the Free Spirit book series!! We recommend them to all of our parents and programs.
Writing lesson starters with stimuli that require discussion prior to and after writing. Often the stimuli have a funny twist, so we can discuss cause and effect.
I tell them to think of their favorite comedian or funny actor and ask them if they would still love them if they always made jokes about other people to be funny and they usually say no. Then I tell them that it’s important to be funny in a positive way so you don’t bring other people down just for a few giggles with a negative joke.
I neeeed these books. I can envision myself using them in the classroom. So many of the children I work with will benefit from learning to self-regulate through them.
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I use humour to show children that I don’t take myself too seriously and can laugh at situations that don’t go the way I anticipated.
I want my students to feel empowered by their confidence. The ability to laugh at oneself and with others is the cornerstone to developing a healthy self-esteem!
I like to tell stories about a funny experience I have had, then add a touch of ‘silly willieness’ to it. Learning to laugh at oneself and not take life so seriously is what I like to share with the ‘little learners’ that I work with. And I even share that with co-workers! Saying things like, “don’t get your panties in a bunch” my co-workers get a kick out of ‘old folks’ jargan (as they call it). But we have learned to laugh together.
I use humour in a couple of ways: with puppets or stuffed toys, to act out scenarios, using ‘silly’ voices; and in initiating conversations with children in the moment, to diffuse the strong feelings, I use over-emphasised gestures, facial expressions and voices. Once the situation has calmed a bit, then I find engaging in the serious breakdown of the event is much easier.
Humor brings about laughter – which makes us all feel better. It’s a great coping skill!
I find humor the most effective way to promote a book in the library. A little humor makes a series very appealing to readers. It also makes kids notice and appreciate the lesson.
When reading stories, I use silly voices and change my expressions to engage the students. This really helps them empathize with the story in social emotional situations.
I use humor through stories and role play activities. It helps motivate the kids to participate as well as making it a memorable activity.
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This looks very exciting and helpful!
Humor and laughter are fun and healthy ways to help make connections among children. It helps lighten the mood and establish camaraderie during lunch groups.
Role playing social-emotional stories, being super dramatic while demonstrating social-emotional mishaps and during class demonstrations with learning tools and manipulatives.
Kids love it when I’m silly! I try go silly things to make them laugh and through that teach a skill. They love when I get on their level. I usually play charades and kids laugh when I act out the silly actions, animals or objects.
I use humor to lighten the mood, relax the students to encourage participation, strengthen their relationships with each other, and also make our time together more fun for all of us! Too many kids have too much stress in their lives.
Laughter is a universal language. I use humor by modeling social-emotional skills with co-teachers or puppets through skits. They could happen periodically throughout the day, and they teach the children that there is a way to label how they are feeling as well as a way to solve it. After each skit we have an intentional discussion around naming our feelings, how to verbalize them, how to ask for help ect. The children love it and its been a great way to engage them in those talks around social-emotional development.
I have always used humor with children to help them experience the joy of laughter (an important expression) and have always worked hard with students of all ages to understand the importance of laughing together, but never laughing at someone!
Humor and good jokes are a great way to get kids to open up about themselves and understand how we sometimes misinterpret others’ feelings.
I’m a Little Free Library steward, as well as a School Psychologist. Sometimes, little people have a difficult time talking about big feelings. I enjoy reading books, doing activities and acting out scenarios in a silly way to make kids feel comfortable expressing themselves and learning about uncomfortable topics!
I use humor with my students every day! We look at their behavior choice together and ask “Does this make sense? Did it work for me or against me?” Often we realize how funny the choice was, Then we make a plan to try a specific and different choice next time.
I use humor to build relationships with my students.
I like to make up the most ridiculous situations I can involving me and my family members (or them if they’re okay with it) to try to get them to see the situation from a different angle.
This would be great for many groups of students I work with. Humor is a great way to bring them together and lighten the mood.
I love using humor with my students! It helps us connect. One thing I love to do is use exaggerated voices and silly faces with my younger students. I also like to pick up on their own use of humor and play off of that. Getting them engaged and interested is half the battle, and humor has worked wonders for my students!
One of the great things about this series is the way they use humor with children. The humor is the self-deprecating, take a look at ourselves brand, and never disrespectful. The messages are very positive and very real. The truth of our behavior and emotions is humorous.
I feel that humor is a great way to diffuse a situation; if you can get a student to laugh-chances are it can change their perspective. I also feel that humor is a great vehicle to broach difficult or awkward topics as it allows students moments to authentically share or offer feedback. I’ve also used my fur babies and my son as bait in “realistic fictional” portrayals. My students love it and it leaves a lasting imprint….I feel it makes the message more tangible when they can relate to it even vicariously.
Humor is a wonderful tool. I use it with our students to illustrate that we’re all human and we can laugh at ourselves. We can laugh about how our worries grow to the point of ridiculousness or how we react to the tiniest things when we’re stressed. I think it’s a nonthreatening way to take a look at ourselves and it helps the kids feel safe and open to learning.
I use humor in my teaching to gain a student’s interest.
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I use humor with learners to lighten up the situation. They may be upset or down about something and we can find humor to help build the trust and relationship. It also helps when we can tell jokes or over exaggerate the issue and humor can be used that way!
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I use a humorous example from my life (real or created if the situation calls for it!), followed by a reading.
Humor helps me build relationships and rapport with children. I also use humor to act out with puppets or role play outrageous non-examples of appropriate social skills. For example, when teaching rules of the classroom, I have another teacher come in and act out what not to do, in a silly fashion (displaying a non-example). Then the kids can “fix” the example and explain what to do.
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I often use humor to help build relationships with kids. I feel it often helps break the ice and helps them see me as someone they can trust and have fun with! It works even better sometimes if I make a joke about myself or tell a silly story-it also helps build rapport and keeps them engaged!
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Humor is a great way to build relationships and keep a relationship fresh and involved. You can get a child to connect fastest through humor than any other form of communication.
I use humor to help my students learn that school can be fun and we can build relationships through light-hearted moments.
I really enjoy the books and uses them in classroom guidance. I appreciate the approach to addressing difficult topics. I find that using humor sometimes reduces the anxiety and tension regarding issues of concern. Humor allows an opportunity to build and grow relationships, by allow the student to know that sometimes those same issues make you uncomfortable too. Humor put a human spin on difficult stuff.
I use humor to discuss difficult situations with my students. This allows them to feel more comfortable discussing the topic.
Humor breaks the ice, makes learning and reading fun, lets children know you also have a sense of humor and makes for a more enjoyable, relaxing environment.
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I use stick puppets to engage the kids in learning about their feelings and choices: Theo who thinks, Fiona who feels and Doodle who ‘just does’ things. 🙂 They get a kick out of it, and remember them easily.
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Humor gives kids another tool to use when they are feeling big things – modeling using humor as a coping skill also helps them see that grownups have big feelings too and have had to learn good ways to handle them.
Love your books and e-mailed my humor in the classroom story to you. I role play an event that occurred to me at the same age of my students, and they can see how I was being fearful and over-reacting. We discuss how it worked out and similar events that might happen to them and how they can respond. Shared your page on FB and Pinterest.
Humour works to break the ice when I want to introduce a sensitive/heavy topic. It’s good to share with students the importance of being able to laugh AT ourselves and WITH others.
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I use humor to show students that we are all human and that laughter is a great stress reliever.
I use humor when I see a child starting
to get frustrated . It usually does the trick !
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When I use humor in situations that are tough I teach students to reframe their experiences. I have usde some of these books in Advisory class and have lent them to students. I would love to have the series!
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I like to use puppets who are silly examples of having no idea when it comes to social emotional skills so the students and I can teach the puppets together and learn alongside them, about social emotional skills.
What a great opportunity! Humour is great to use to build relationships with the children! If you are laughing, that means you are having fun! We would love to have this series of books to use for circle time with our children here!
Using humor in the classroom is a great technique to connect with the children. I’ve used a combination of games and puppets. The kids laugh along while the learn about the topic and make connections.
Humor makes the learning fun.
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I use humor or silliness to bring down a meltdown. I always have other kids around that I can be silly with. If I’m being silly with another child when someone is at the beginning of a meltdown, it often helps them to calm down and want to join in.
With the way things are in our society today, we as teachers are trying to help students learn the rules for getting along. This set of books would fit in so nicely with my activities.
Humor helps me build rapport with students!
I do a feelings storytime with puppets and flannelboard faces.
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Using humor in the classroom is one of the best ways to get children engaged. If you’re having fun, they’re more likely to have fun! It also makes the day feel less like work when you’re doing something you enjoy.
Amazing books that would be perfect for my large group counseling lessons
One thing I know is true, when working with children, you have to be able to find humor in most situations. Humor is a way to alleviate stress and irrational thinking. Humor contributes to diffusing many situations, especially related to social-emotional engagement. It’s important to teach children to control their emotions and actions and through humor it makes this task much more simple to teach. When we focus on finding the “bright side” of things, we usually come out on top of most situations.
I use humor to make connections and let kids know that I struggle with things too. It really helps.
I would love this set to work on manners with the 1-3rd grade students I work with. Humor goes a long way to help keep their attention!
I use the dramatic play area to talk about feelings with children. Use examples of situations i saw earlier with the children to process through what that conversation looked and feel like for everyone in the situation.
When talking about feelings I use puppets and emojis to help students discover the importance of feelings and why it is good to talk with someone about those feelings. Humor of course is a part of it, especially where puppets are involved.
Humor is a great way to get the kids engaged, hold their attention, and start a conversation or discussion.
I use humour lighten the mood in the classroom and help connect with the students.
When students have “big” emotions, after they process – I like to follow with humor (I use a laughter whistle and we laugh for 30 seconds). This helps “rewire” the brain.
I use humor everyday…as we talk about feelings…when we can add humor it is helpful…silliness keeps some subjects light…
I have found that being able to use humor with students is a great way to defuse difficult and/or tense situations and emotions. Getting kids to laugh with you helps to break the tension and often to see another, more positive side of a situation. Laughter can help to strengthen the bond between student and teacher, and sharing a funny story about yourself beings authenticity to the relationship. It allows a student to view you as a person, in addition to being their teacher.
Humour is an important element of growth of social and emotional skills of a child. I normally bring humour into the introduction of various concepts by bringing in humorous personal anecdotes
( fictional ), to lighten the atmosphere and make the children relate to the concept easily
Sometimes reading a silly book, relaxes the students enough to open up more when we talk through situations in the book.
It’s all about engagement!
Sometimes a humorous story or anecdote is all it takes to engage a student to move towards the teaching of a skill.
I use humor to ease students and build relationships with them. Getting a student to smile is a great first step to earning their trust. Also, humor engages students in lessons–whether I’m telling a joke or using a silly voice–students pay attention.
Wonderful series that I would love to have in my resource classroom!