Episode 6

Written By Caylee Carullo

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Episode 6. Behavior Management Problems? We’ve got 3 Strategies for you to try!

Today’s episode is going to be PART 1 of a two part series that will give you LOTS of behavior management strategies to help turn things around in your classroom.




Today’s episode is going to be PART 1 of a two part series that will give you 7 behavior management strategies to help turn things around in your classroom.

First, we want to take a second to read a review from Itunes... This review is from martial685459 “Finally a couple of Pre-K Teachers who “get it” ...they understand the ins and outs and struggles with teaching these wonderful little humans… thanks for being real ladies!” thank you marti-- Again we want to remind you that the biggest way you can help us get our podcast to more teachers is by leaving us a review! If you do, please screen shot it and send it to us! We love reading our reviews and we want to personally thank everyone that has taken the time to leave them for us!

Ok, today is a pretty exciting episode, we are going to give you lots of ideas for lots of behaviors that you’re probably seeing…

Do you have kids who are SUPER IMPATIENT? 

Kids who have trouble sharing, No matter what you’ve tried?

Do you have trouble getting your kids attention when they get too loud?

Do you find your kids to be unmotivated to make good choices? 

Do you cringe when you have to walk your kids across the building because they have such a hard time walking in line?

Do some of your kids give up easily? Or Have trouble trying when things get a little hard? 

Do you keep reminding kids of the same expectations over and over? But they are still having trouble?

Do you wish you had a fun way to bring attention to positive behaviors that didn’t take a lot of time or effort?

Are there certain behaviors you’d like to improve on with your students but you haven’t found a fun way to make the behaviors stick? Like using their own words instead of tattling?

AND FINALLY, sometimes kids are misbehaving, and their choices need to be addressed..but you don’t want to say too much..you can’t just ignore them, but you’re not trying to get on a train to negative town… there’s a fine line to walk here, teachers...but we have the strategy for you to try that will keep things positive but will address those negative choices kids sometimes make.

These can all be tough to deal with… but we have lots of ideas for you… 

Ok, I am very excited about this episode… I start with one idea and I just keep getting more and more excited to tell you more and more things about it and I just think a lot of teachers are going to find this two part series helpful in one way or another… 

We are going to be sharing 7 awesome strategies that are going to help you get, and keep control of your little munchkins… some of these may be ideas you’ve heard from us before, but we might give you a fresh new idea of how to use it… 

Yup, ok… let’s do it, Layne, what’s number one?

#1 - Sticker charts 

  • Do you find your kids to be unmotivated to make good choices? 

  • Do you find that just narrating good behaviors is not powerful enough to change the behavior of kids who aren’t making good choices?

  • Do you wish you had a fun way to bring attention to positive behaviors that didn’t take a lot of time or effort?



So here’s what the sticker charts are: they are just a 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 piece of paper, at the beginning of the year they start out white and then we go to the colors of the rainbow...... so after their white sticker chart is completed then they get a red one and an orange one and then yellow one and then green one and a blue one and a purple one and a pink one and a silver one and a gold one and then I can do just sort of pattern paper… every child has a sticker chart… and the color doesn’t matter, it just signifies the progression… like they are getting somewhere…I got this idea from whole brain teaching...and a lot of times teachers would add words to the levels..like sometimes they could correspond with baseball-- the first white sticker chart would be “rookie” and then the next red one could be learner… and the orange one could be leader.. And yellow could be captain… green could be rising star, blue could be pro… purple could be expert… pink could be genius… then super star could be silver and gold could be legend…. Our kids are a little small and might not totally get this but it’s a fun way to throw in some new vocabulary words… always looking for a teachable moment! 


so that first white sticker chart has their name on the top (or you could write the baseball term, “Rookie” or “beginner” whatever you want to do… but I always put a little tiny square picture of them in the top right corner… and then there’s 10 black dots, that we just draw at random with a sharpie… they put 10 stickers on each chart, and then that chart is considered as filled. (We’ll talk about filled sticker charts in just a second.) 



So you can prep this for the whole year in one sitting… you can cut up the pieces of paper (16 white, 16 red, 16 orange..etc) or as many kids as you have… and then I would use a large pocket chart with clips on it to spread out the sticker charts. I’d have all the rest of the stacks of colors up and ready to go for when a child filled their sticker chart by having them clipped together at the bottom of the pocket chart, in color order to motivate the kids, they caught onto the system quickly… I will share some pics on my instagram of our sticker charts.


You want to be able to react to the things that your kids are doing and you want to mainly focus on reacting positively to their positive actions. As soon as you start correcting and going to negative town then you're gonna start seeing more negative things... but whenever you can find a strategy to help to point out the positive things, then that snowballs as well, and you'll see “oh, now they're catching on and they're doing the positive things that I want to see!!”

Yup, my favorite way to get that kind of a snowball rolling is by using stickers to react constantly to what kids are doing in a positive way. So you say, “oh wow look at you I’m putting a sticker on your shirt!”



Ok, but once you put stickers on a kid’s shirt, they love to put it on their hands, their face… how do you keep the stickers from ending up on the furniture and all over the place?



So, here’s how I handle that. … right at the beginning of the year or whenever you’re introducing this concept I give them all a sticker and then I have them put it on their hand in their face and their shirt and then stick it back on their hand and then stick it on their face and I model it up in the front for everyone and I stick it on my forehead and then I try to put it back on my shirt and it’s not very sticky anymore so then when I try to go put it on my sticker chart..dun, dun, dun...we got a problem!! and I actually model for them how I try to stick it in the chart and it falls.

And then I very seriously explain to them that if your sticker does not stick to your sticker chart and it doesn’t count for you and so once you get a sticker on your shirt you do not touch it you leave it there because you want to make sure that sticker gets to your sticker chart and stays on it.



Ok, that’s a great idea… so you gotta make sure the kids see what will happen to effectively deter them from sticking the stickers everywhere, I like that idea… but, caylee, what happens when the sticker charts get filled up? Is this another complicated thing for teachers to keep track of or spend money on?

Great question, and the answer is NO… this doesn’t have to be a big production..So you can make the options to choose after you fill your sticker chart whatever you want them to be, it’s not a prize box let me make that very clear…

So when I would have my students fill their sticker charts, they would usually have three options to pick from … the first option would be they could choose a paper airplane which they would take home to enjoy (for the most part) there have been a few days I’d let them take them on the playground and have fun with them, but for the most part, we do sticker charts at the end of the day of Friday’s like the last 20 minutes… I would play videos or play a read-aloud up on the screen  and call kids up to ask what they wanted if their sticker charts were filled… not everyone's sticker chart was filled every week and that was ok… in the beginning you want them to be excited and respond to the stickers, so I’d give them more often and maybe you’d spend the last 20 minutes two days a week to let kids turn in their sticker charts… 

(I’d write the date on the back and write what the kids picked for that sticker chart, and then all their sticker charts would go into their scrapbooks...THEY LOVE looking back on all of their sticker charts and asking, “What did I pick for this one? And their parent can read it, “March 4...Layne filled her sticker chart and chose a paper airplane.”)


Ok, so back to the paper airplanes… 



Wait a sec, What if you don’t know how to make paper airplanes?

HAHA, great question..I don’t know how to make them… I would ask parent Volunteers to make us a bunch of these are the beginning of the year and there are a lot of parents that love doing this or older brothers that take a lot of pride in making us some cool paper airplanes because I can’t make them I’m terrible at making them but I would always have families that would help me out here… at first, I started sending home cardstock for parents to make paper airplanes for us (shows how much I know about paper planes, haha the cardstock was not ideal… it was too heavy and they didn’t fly as well… so we went with just normal printer paper after we discovered that...so I’d send home 10 or 20 sheets of different color printer paper and whenever they got them done, they’d send us back in a bag of paper airplanes, and sometimes I’d let kids stick a few stickers on them to help me decorate them a little… 


so kids would get to take home their paper airplanes and show their families, it’s still a very simple thing but they loved to get to take home and show their families… you will see that families will react in a big way to the sticker charts… they love hearing about great things happening at school….


The next thing in the most popular reward that kids would pick for filling their sticker charts is face paint. No I’m not an artist if you don’t already know that I cannot paint anything that they would come up requesting and I would have to tell them everyone just gets a flower you can pick the two colors that you want your flower to be but that’s all I can paint. 

And by “painting a flower” I mean I put a circle in the middle of their cheek and then I put circles around the circle and we call it a flower.

You guys would be surprised they go nuts for this...I just use normal painta that comes from the Crayola the little containers where it’s Like a row of the tiny containers and it comes with 3 rows of like the connected tiny containers, I’ll put a link in the show notes.


One year I was on a home visit and I had a parent show me just a tray of the watercolor paints and said “isn’t this what you use to paint their faces my son told me that and asked me to paint his face” she’s like I painted his entire face with this … actually it was the day before picture day... I couldn’t get the paint off I was scrubbing his face in the bathtub they was still a little bit of blue on his face for picture day, did you notice?” ….. and I was like that is not the paint that I use😂😂😂…


I loved when you would do face painting… I would always make you paint my face too. We did it for all the big events too… like parties and field days. 

OK and the last reward they can choose is nail painting and this one you might be up for, or you might want to leave out because there’s always the potential that a boy will choose painting the nails… in the beginning I’ve thought I had a back up plan for boys who wanted to pick the nails painting I said that I would trace their hands on paper and let them paint the nails of that tracing.. but immediately I had parents that say if my son chooses to have his nails painted paint them and I said OK.

If this is getting too controversial for you just leave it off as an option but it wasn’t a big deal I probably had two or three boys over the seven years of teaching that chose to have their nails painted it felt a little odd at first, but it ain’t no Thang…

The sticker charts are very motivating for students and this is also a way to connect with families because when they fill their sticker chart that’s the first thing they’re going to tell their family after school, and you will see that it lights up the faces of the parents to they love to see that their kid is feeling successful and they’re having a good time at school. ( not to mention all that good fine motor practice peeling those stickers off!) 

Stickers are easy. Kids love stickers. We love stickers. Sticker charts are just an all around great idea for pre-k aged students. I would cut up sticker sheets into sections of like 5 or 6 stickers and then I’d hole punch them and put them on a keyring and attach them to my apron… I’d have stickers right on my hip, ready to go whenever I needed to point out a great behavior..

AND another great thing about stickers is that if your students are having trouble behaving during specials, this is an easy system to pass off to the art teacher or the PE teacher… tell them to throw out a few stickers and you will make a big deal about it after specials… and then, when they get back to the classroom you can call them up one at a time to put the stickers on their charts and give them a high five… 

Another sidenote, you will want to designate a time for kids to put the stickers onto their charts, otherwise, you will have kids walking up to put stickers on their charts constantly… I would usually have them keep their stickers on their shirt until the end of the day, and then before I’d send them back to get their backpack I’d have them put their stickers on their charts… or as I read them a story at the end of the day I would signal silently to each of them one at a time to go put their stickers on their chart and come sit back down… 


Also, because the charts have 10 dots on them, you can make this into a math lesson… how many stickers do you have? How many more do you need to get to 10? Count how many you have… show me that many fingers… how many dots do you have left?

Ok, I think that’s about it for the sticker chart strategy… What’s #2 Layne?

#2 - Smelly spots-

  • Do you cringe when you have to walk your kids across the building because they have such a hard time walking in line? Are you saying a little prayer before you leave the classroom in hopes no kids have meltdowns in the hall or crossing your fingers getting to the lunchroom won’t take 20 mins?!?! 

  • Do you have some kids who benefit from sensory experiences?

If you have not used smelly spots yet, you are in for a treat… 



Smelly spots are just chapsticks that smell good, and you use them by putting a dot on the back of a child’s hand for them to smell that delicious smell. The amount of joy this brings to a student is unbelievable… it’s such a simple and quick thing that could make them so happy. 

And it makes adults happy to last year for St. Patrick’s Day, we had the leprechaun leave us a whole thing of new smelly spots which is really just a lip smackers kit of tons of the most delicious smelling with smackers, like from my childhood, i think my favorite one used to be strawberry kiwi comet, it was like pink and sparkly.. I don’t know if they make that one anymore.. Haha…… The kids had so much fun with me as I opened each one and said oh my God it’s kiwi, we got kiwi here!! or it’s vanilla, Oh my God chocolate chip cookie or mango! Then, I’d give them a chance to smell the Chapstick in the morning because we were all so excited we could just smell each one and then throughout the day I’ll be able to give them smelly spots and they were so excited…

Let me tell you my daughter is OBSESSED with lip smackers and I’m pretty sure she is making my son addicted too. Smelly spots are such a simple thing to throw in throughout the day that it’s not a huge disruption but it is a huge reward for the child because they can continue to smell that delicious smell and it stimulates their senses and just makes them feel good!


Invest in some smelly spots and start seeing how quickly you can motivate your students to earn one…I could easily motivate my whole class to walk nicely all the way to specials knowing that they would get a smelly spot when we got there and then I would always keep my smelly spots in a little key ring and hang them off of my apron…

P.S.- If you’re not wearing an apron every day, it’s time to step your teacher game up. We will do a future episode about this, but I have also made a funny youtube video explaining why I wear an apron.. If you haven’t checked it out, I will link it in the shownotes.


Just a funny story about smelly spots- My daughter doesn't care for public restrooms because of the smell. We recently went on a road trip and I was worried about her being able to use the restrooms and refusing because she hates the smell that much. But then I remembered smelly spots! It worked like a charm! I would put the lip smackers on her hand before we went in and we had no problems! Yay 

Also - My nephew recently went on a playdate with a new friend and was going to ride home in his friends moms car. For some reason my sister said he was really worried about the car smelling stinky…. So my sister rubbed some lip smackers on a bandana and he smelled that during the car ride home ha ha ha! Worked perfectly :) 


YESS..these are great stories, kids love getting to smell sweet smells!! :)

What’s next on our list, Layne?

#3- Magic Sprays—

  • Do you have kids who are SUPER IMPATIENT? 

  • Kids who have trouble sharing? No matter what you’ve tried?

  • Do some of your kids give up easily? Have trouble trying when things are hard? 

Well I’m gonna tell you how you can do that … and it’s with magic sprays. 

Magic sprays are just tiny spray bottles that usually look pretty different colors and you can decide what spray bottle has what magic power…

.. they are bottles that are filled with mostly water but then you add in a drop or two of a perfume or a essential oil or anything with some kind of a scent... I’m talking a very faint scent one drop into a whole thing of water, it’s not overwhelming - like spraying perfume all over the kids


I had several magic sprays


I would tell the kids that these sprays were very expensive but I spent my own money to buy them these very magical expensive sprays… I don’t know why but hearing that they were expensive gets the kids very excited they feel like it’s very special.


… One of them was a smart spray I put a little picture of a kid having a lightbulb moment on it and wrote smart spray and the kids knew that if something was really hard they might just need a spray smart spray to take care of this to help them out… 

Another one was friendship spray so if you have two kids having trouble sharing or forgetting to use the magical phrase can I use that when you’re done or having other problems during center time you can stop them and say hold on little buddy looks like you might need a spray of friendship spray that will help you to try that one again.


And what’s so special about any kind of spray is that it removes the shame part of the situation so without the spray, a kid grabs a toy and you go over and say oh no that’s not how we do it we don’t grab a toy, and right away their face kind of drops and they feel sad like I did something I wasn’t supposed to do… but when you can flip it and say, “hey little buddy I noticed that you grabbed a toy I think we should try some friendship spray”… for whatever reason they don’t feel like “dang it I messed up”... they are quicker to see it as an opportunity to grow and do better which is very important for such little kids… it removes them from the bad choice and gives them a chance to try it again… which is the most important part… because it’s just a fact of life that young children aren’t always sure what to do or don’t always make the right decision so giving them a chance to do it again will help them to learn how to do it better in the future you don’t need the shaming part for the lesson to stick. 

Then another awesome one we have is calm spray so I would introduce this to the whole group by saying OK we got a new spray here it’s a very special one… it’s called calm spray and on it there was a picture of a little kid doing yoga like very relaxed and I would tell them When you get the spray of this one you have to breathe it in very deeply and it will help to calm your body it’s pretty amazing…

 And then I would go around and give each kid a spray and you have to make sure that the sprayer is on that like high mist not like a powerful stream spray, i’ll put a link in the show notes for the little bottles that I got off of Amazon that were perfect. I didn’t pass off the job of letting the kids spray it just because you’re opening up a whole can of worms right there, I would sometimes ask them to go get the spray for me but I was always the one to spray it. And I would always make sure that I was spraying it up in front of them so they kind of lean into the mist and then you know automatically they take a breath which taking a deep breath alone is a calming action for them… so the sprays are beneficial in multiple ways.

for other uses--  if you have naptime in your classroom I would have a naptime spray that was like in a blue bottle with the water inside and I would add silver glitter into it so it looked really really really special. And I would tell them that this expensive fancy spray helps them to get ready for naptime so I would have them all set up their mats and then I would come around and took them each in and after I checked him out ask them if they want to spray of naptime is right and almost every kid said yes so I kind of sprayed up into the air and they’re just laying there calmly breathing it in relaxing their bodies… it was super helpful in getting the kids ready for the naptime part of the day.


The sprays are magical… they really are! I feel like you can make a spray for almost anything. I remember we created a healing spray too. You know when kids get upset over little things… you want to validate their feelings but you also can't stop teaching 500 times a day for every kids tiny issue. This was an easy way to validate their issue without having to completely stop a lesson.  It's kinda like I see you…. I want to acknowledge your struggle right now - here's a spray of healing spray. I would also use this for the excessive crying that comes after a fall or mishap. You know when kids get a little scrap and you've given hugs, you’ve put bandaids on, you’ve shown empathy and they still keep crying…. Welp, this is another perfect time for healing spay. OHHHHH….. I know you hurt your knee and I can see the bandaid and hug haven't done the trick. Let me try my healing spray ….. It helps you feel better and calm down. I usually always say close your eyes and say abra ca dabra all a kazoo make (kids name) scout feel better with this spray from me to you...poof and spray! Yay done and done! Usually works


OMG, that is all so brilliant...how did I never come up with this? I guess it’s similar to why I wore my apron everyday so I could easily access my bandaides… make sure to check out my youtube video about that… I think you’ll appreciate it..


Ok, one last thing, you can make the magic sprays look special by adding drops of food coloring, or a little fine glitter (don’t go overboard with the glitter because it can clog the spray, but a little twinkle should be ok….) again I have a link to the bottles I used in the show notes. 



Ok, so this is where we are going to stop our list for today’s episode, next week we will be giving you 4 more ideas, make sure you are subscribed in case we release it early, hint hint… 


And I want to end with a quick update about the Pre-K Teacher Family….we have started partnering with teachers that have their own TPT shops… so shout out to ashley with theprekday, you can find her on instagram and rachel with engagingearlylearners, they are the first two teachers I’ve reached out to, and they were both happy to share some of their documents with us...so you will see the folders are growing and we are going to keep reaching out to awesome TPT creators out there to expand our resource base! Remember if you use our promocode, which is the word podcast, you can get 30% off your membership to the Pre-K Teacher Family… the months are flying by, give yourself a break.. Let us support you! Visit my website to join today triedandtrueteacher.com 






Caylee Carullo
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