Who doesn't love a good Julia Cook book? This is a great story about a little girl who worries about all sorts of stuff (a variety that hits most worries you see with your kiddos). I also bought the activity book that goes along with the book. I love that Julia provides activities that use many learning styles, making the group interesting and fun for everyone! My worry group lasts about 6 weeks and my hope is that in the 6 weeks my students learn strategies to help calm themselves down when they are feeling anxious. Here is my group outline:
Week 1-
Week 3-
Week 4-
Week 5
Week 6
Week 1-
- Go over my group rules and create any additional rules the group deems necessary
- Decorate our group folders and share with the group why we made our decorative choice
- Read Wilma Jean the Worry Machine by Julia Cook
- talk about how our bodies feel when we are worried
- Introduce and practice square breathing
Week 3-
- Review Wilma Jean the Worry Machine
- Talk about what each student worries or feels anxious about (page 5 in the activity book)
- Talk about which worries you can control and which worries you cannot control ( page 6 in the activity book)
Week 4-
- Allow time to finish activities from last week if needed
- Talk about individual students worries and if they could control them or not
- Discuss ideas to control worries
- Create a chain of events (page 8 of the activity book)
Week 5
- Make a worry monster that will eat and store all the students worries (page 11 in the activity book)
- Discuss the idea of storing worries away until you have time to deal with them
Week 6
- Review strategies for calming worries discussed during group
- Make a root beer 'worry floats' (page 10 in the activity book)- the ice cream is everything we have going on in our lives while the root beer is our worries. A little worrying is ok, but if we worry too much we overflow.