School Counseling Program Components

My Plush Sidekicks!
The following are some of the ideas I use to stay organized and keep students engaged.

Macy & Marley

These two curious creatures are what brings me FAME among Kindergartners! Marley visits the K-2 Classrooms with me and sometimes brings his cousin Macy with. The puppets are wonderful tools for students to become familiar with who I am at the school. Mrs. Ziegelmann is a tough name for Kindergarteners at the beginning of the year, for some reason Marley is very easy for 5 and 6 years olds to remember!

These two of them have a variety of friendship and school-related problems the students help to solve. It never fails, at the beginning of the school year, Marley has forgotten almost everything the students helped teach him the previous year! Thankfully the 1st & 2nd graders are very willing to help reteach Marley.

These monkeys are also very useful for classroom management strategies. Marley is very shy and when a class gets too noisy Marley will hide in the bag I brought him to the class in. All it takes is for one student to point out (and they notice very quickly what these monkeys do) "Hey! Marley is gone!" and the students will redirect themselves and others to quiet down.