Susanne Fischer 

This theme encourages inquiry into the nature of the self; beliefs and values; person, physical, mental, social and spiritual health; human relationships including families, friends, communities, and cultures; rights and responsibilities, and what it means to be human.\nDK have selected books for this transdisciplinary theme which focus on emotions, well-being and learning about life skills – concepts that have become even more important since the pandemic. Many schools have introduced (or re-introduced) a greater focus on these concepts to support their students as they recover from the impacts of the global events that have interrupted their learning and well-being. 

Who We Are

A beautifully illustrated book that covers the essential life skills that children need to know. Discover how you can become the awesome person you want to be with this guide to essential life skills for children. This book helps kids tackle the difficulties they face and helps them to prepare for whatever the future may hold. Inside the pages of this essential life skills book, you'll discover: - Clear and practical life skills divided into 5 chapters covering: Finding Solutions, Ways of Thinking, Communicating, Understanding Feelings, and Coping in Life - Bright, fun illustrations that help readers to digest complex topics like understanding body language and decision making - Topics that drill down into all the different aspects of life skills education for 7-9-year-olds, such as communication, solving problems, understanding yourself and others, and critical thinking skills - Practical advice and activities on how to think up solutions for difficult problems, how to work with other people as a team, and how to write a feelings diary This illustrated guide for children includes practical advice and real-life examples that teach problem-solving, how to make good decisions, and excellent communication skills. Children will learn how to better assess and react to challenges they may face, as well as create coping strategies for difficult situations. Kids can work through engaging activities like making mind maps, thinking about body language, and putting themselves in someone else's shoes. Developing life skills not only leads to better prospects at school and in a future career, but it also gives young people more confidence to aim for a bright, secure and happy future.

Life Skills

Life skills\n covers a whole range of concepts and ideas, relevant to \nWho we are,\n but also to the approaches to learning (ATL skills). It inspires students to be the best possible type of learners and aims to equip them with a fantastic scope of skills, all packaged in an exciting and colorful book.  Ranging from coping with stressful and unfamiliar situations, to healthy habits and understanding the domino effect of behaviours, this book really covers a lot of the skills we want our students to learn about. The book also highlights a range of awareness days and suggests student-friendly links and further resources. Again, this is a book that can inspire all sorts of fantastic classroom activities. Reading the section about communication skills (great link to the ATLs), I immediately thought of a task where students create a ‘Communication Superhero’, which could make for an amazing classroom display to include all the features we want to see in great communicators. \n\nLife Skills\n is a brilliant resource to have in a PYP classroom as it covers so many aspects of what our Programme is about and what we want our learners to be. As the concepts in this book are a little more complex and advanced, I would recommend this book to be used in upper PYP classes, though of course some ideas could be simplified to suit younger learners, too. 

Teach your kids how to focus their thoughts and notice the world around them with this fun mindfulness kids activity book. Mindfulness activities are a great way to teach children about their thoughts and feelings and how to understand them - while having fun at the same time. This book includes activities - make a mindfulness jar, learn how to appreciate food with mindful eating, and get out into nature and explore the outside world. Calm: Mindfulness for Kids has everything you need to know about focusing your child's mind to help them enjoy and appreciate things that they take for granted every day, while boosting their confidence and self-esteem. Children are guided through each activity, to make sure they achieve maximum enjoyment and awareness. All children will learn and react to each activity in a different way and parent's notes give advice on how to encourage children to embrace mindfulness in the modern world. Each specially designed activity is flexible for each child's needs and inspires them to seek calmness and tranquility in all situations. Calm: Mindfulness for Kids shows that supporting a child's positive mental health doesn't need to be expensive, time-consuming, or difficult. Activities help children to de-stress, focus, and get moving while having fun.

Calm - Mindfulness For Kids

Another wonderful book to help students with emotions and focus is \nCalm: Mindfulness for Kids\n. This is not your typical mindfulness guide focusing solely on breathing techniques – it offers an amazing range of hands-on activities to support focus, calmness and self-awareness such as making ‘Energy Slime’ and supporting one another with ‘Breathing Buddies’. Ideas and activities such as these can help students to stay calm and focused throughout the day with the additional benefit of building a sense of togetherness as they work collaboratively.\nApart from supporting the mental health focus of \nWho we are \nthemes, \nCalm\n also offers activities linked to some of the learner profile attributes, as well as some key concepts. A ‘Caring Scrapbook’ may be a nice opportunity for your students to keep a record of situations to help document when they have been particularly caring to a member of the school community, or their family. The book also offers some great ideas for reflection activities, which I am very thankful for! It gives us an opportunity to make reflection tasks more varied and engaging. \n\nCalm\n is a great book that will come in handy in your classroom, not just during your \nWho we are\n inquiry. It offers so many fantastic ideas and activities, all in one place, and accessible to all learners. 

My Mixed Emotions\n is a fantastic book to help your students understand how and why we experience certain emotions. The book breaks down the science behind different emotions and can therefore help students to have a greater understanding of why they might feel a certain way in a certain situation. This title offers some great inspiration for a whole range of classroom activities, including the different stages of the ‘Emotions HQ’. This could be set up in your classroom to model the different stages students go through as they experience a range of emotions. Each concept in the book is supported by scientific facts with activities can easily link to lines of inquiry concerned with exploring systems within the human body.  \n\nAnother great idea inspired by this book is ‘A bowl of happiness’ which could be turned into a reflection or essential agreement task for your class. Why not create a recipe for happiness with your students and add it to a big display bowl that everyone adds to? It could be a nice reminder for everyone that we all contribute to each other's happiness throughout the course of a school day.  \n\nMy Mixed Emotions \nis packed with amazing ideas and activities for your classroom and is suitable for all ages, year groups and abilities. The activities can easily be differentiated and would easily see you through an entire school year. The book covers a wide variety of emotions that students may need support with, including big changes such as grief, divorce, jealousy, fairness and so much more.

This theme encourages inquiry into orientation in place and time; personal histories; homes and journeys; the discoveries, explorations and migrations of humankind; the relationship between and the interconnectedness of individuals and civilizations, from local and global perspectives.\nThe three books I am focusing on for \nWhere we are in place and time\n make great resources for a PYP department as they include a whole range of historical and geographical concepts, events and facts. They are packed with plenty of ideas to inspire and support students as they discover different locations, eras and significant global occurrences. 

Where We Are In Place and Time

Bring history to life with more than 40 colourful maps in this children's atlas full of fascinating nuggets of information about our past. This beautiful history atlas helps children learn about world history all the way from the first people leaving Africa right up to how the world looks now, with a modern world map. Journey around the world as you learn its history, with maps showing everything from the awe-inspiring Great Wall of China to the when and how of the US Civil War. Children are shown how to read a map and how to use a key, compass, and scale. Each map is bursting with information, such as how big the Roman Empire was, how explorers made incredible journeys around the world, and when humans first travelled into space. Children's Illustrated History Atlas is an essential addition to every child's library and includes a beautiful illustrated poster. Young history buffs will love this time-travelling adventure.

Children's Illustrated History Atlas

The \nChildren’s Illustrated History Atlas \nis a great resource to teach students how to use maps, as well as timelines. It identifies and explains key features and offers an incredible range of ways to lay out different overviews of time and place. Spanning from the ‘Ancient World’ to the ‘Modern World’, the \nHistory Atlas\n could be used in multiple year groups inquiring into different time frames or, if you have several copies available, would make a great baseline for groups within your class exploring and researching different eras of history. The book also includes some nice ideas to teach students how to use reference books and how to find information by suggesting an ‘Atlas picture quiz’ and a ‘Find the fact’ quiz. Using ‘Find the fact’ could be a nice opportunity for teachers to model ‘reading with a purpose’. Students could be tasked to find particular facts ‘hidden’ within the book and, in turn, could challenge each other to find particular facts, making reading and exploring facts in the \nHistory Atlas\n an engaging activity.\n\n

People & Places \nanother amazing book, packed with facts and visual overviews for students. Again, this is a resource that could be shared across year groups and even transdisciplinary themes, as it also includes some great information for those classes who may explore cultures during their \nWho we are\n unit. \nThis book is incredible and features stunning photographs from around the world. It’s a great resource for students researching the reasons for migration, how societies operate in different places, or comparing homes and environments.  The content can be used as inspiration for how to lay out work, supporting another one of the ATL skills. The way that maps, images and information are laid out throughout the book could be a great way to model how to present information in books or on poster boards. As \nPeople & Places\n offers many comparisons between different cultures, students could focus on topics such as housing and use the book to create overviews and presentations of the different types of homes found in different countries and cultures. There would even be scope to plan group activities with different groups focusing on different topics (housing, food, sports, clothing etc.) before feeding back to the class.\n\n

Packed with more than 1,000 incredible images and full of fascinating facts, this beautiful children's book takes you on an exciting round-the-globe tour, with a stopover in every nation on every continent! Did you know that Cuba's national sport is baseball, one of the most popular sports in the US? And that kids in both Japan and Chile have earthquake drills on their school schedule? Find out about anything from the spookily vibrant Day of the Dead parade in Mexico and the beautiful springtime cherry blossom displays of Japan, to blueberry-picking in Sweden and India's space programme. Discover the countries of the world - explore their geography, wildlife, traditions, and arts, in this picture-packed children's book. Every country profile is full of photos, and each nation has a full-colour map detailing its main cities, landscape features, and borders, and exactly where in the world they are, in this engaging encyclopedia for children aged 9-12. Celebrate your child's curiosity as they explore: -Striking and detailed diagrams, drawings and illustrations on every page -A highly visual approach to learning -Ideal combination of colourful diagrams with infographic text boxes This captivating kids encyclopedia tackles our weird and wonderful world continent by content, with informative profiles for each of the 196 nations of the world and striking illustrations, photographs and diagrams featured throughout provide an optimum visual learning experience for both children and adults alike, accompanied by an array of fun facts from around the globe! This world encyclopedia includes at-a-glance panels that provide a quick reference to all the stats, making this engaging encyclopedia for kids an ideal combination of colourful diagrams and infographic text boxes with easy-to-read accessible text for readers aged 9-12, yet can be enjoyed by the entire family, making this enthralling children's encyclopedia a beautiful and educational gift that can be passed down generations. Learn all about the world one picture at a time! If you like Countries of the World, then why not complete the collection? Part of the highly-visual Our World In Pictures series, avid readers can dive into the world of dinosaurs with The Dinosaur Book, become a vehicle virtuoso with Cars, Trains, Ships and Planes and explore the incredible animal kingdom with Animal Book.

Our World in Pictures: Countries, Cultures, People & Places

For those classes exploring geographical features and concepts, \nOur World in Pictures: Countries, Cultures, People and Places \noffers beautifully illustrated pages packed with information about different countries and their cultures. The key facts are organised on double pages, offering a quick overview of facts, which may be beneficial for research tasks involving a range of places around the world. The way the pages are designed may inspire students to create their own overviews of countries and cultures, using the features presented in the book. Again, this would cover ATL skills that will be beneficial for students as they progress through the Primary Years Programm\n\n

Read more about incorporating DK books into the IB themes \n ‘How we express ourselves and How the world works’\n and \n‘How we organise ourselves and Sharing the planet,”\n or head back to \nthe introductory article\n for an overview of this series. 

Interested in Learning More?

\n\nSusanne Fischer is an experienced and passionate PYP Coordinator and PYP Educator. She has worked at IB schools in the UK, Germany, Norway and Barbados and is a Global Schools Advocate on behalf of the Global Schools Program, an initiative of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). She regularly gets involved in curriculum development projects and has been a presenter at conferences and international curriculum summits. 

About Susanne

Hopefully, my introductory article has sparked your interest in finding out a little more about some of the wonderful books DK has published. In this second feature, I’ve selected a few titles below that link to some concepts of two of the PYP transdisciplinary themes, \nWho we are\n and \nWhere we are in place and time\n. There are lots of brilliant titles that can be used in the PYP classroom and the possibilities are far greater than what’s being shared here. I encourage you to \ntake a look at the full range\n to find even more suitable titles to support your inquiries, and to access free guides to using DK collections in your classrooms, complete with suggested lesson ideas and worksheets. You can also explore the \nDK IB Collection of books for the PYP.\n

Using DK resources in the IB PYP: Who We Are and Where We Are in Place and Time

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