Lena’s shoes are nervous

ABOUT THE BOOK
FAMILY ACTIVITIES

Lena’s shoes are nervous

text: Keith Calabrese / illustrations: Juana Medina

Lina’s shoes are worried about going to kindergarten on the first day, but they get over it with the help of her headband. This is a story that supports children in overcoming their fear of a new experience. What distinguishes the book is the father’s beautiful mediation in encouraging Lina by asking questions and going along with her imaginative scenarios.

Family Activities

Video

Dear Parents,

As Lina prepares for the first day of kindergarten, her shoes get nervous and refuse to come out of hiding. With the help of her father and the rest of her clothes, Lina tries to talk with her anxious shoes and convince them to go to kindergarten.

New beginnings are full of mixed feelings. The book uses a different method to deal with the feelings that our child has when beginning kindergarten, feelings of excitement and eagerness, and at the same time, feelings of anxiousness and nervousness. The support of the child’s parents, giving legitimacy to their feelings of anxiety and tension, searching with them for their latent abilities and what makes them feel safe, reminding them of situations and events during which they were able to be brave, overcome difficulties and fears, and highlighting them, are factors that will help our child enhance their confidence, gather their strength and courage, and facilitate their adaptation to the new environment.

This book highlights the role of the father as a supporting figure for the child and the shoes. This gives us a model for a dialogue that legitimizes the child’s feelings of tension and anxiety in new beginnings, like the heroine of this book whose father gradually supports her until she finds a solution and overcomes her difficulties and fears. Therefore, she is able to help the shoes restore their self-confidence to go to kindergarten.

Family Activities

Let’s talk
about the shoes’ feelings: We can read the story with our children several times. We can trace the drawings, and talk about the feelings of the shoes from the beginning to the end of the story. We can ask the children: How do the shoes feel? We name the feelings, and we ask them: Why did they feel this way?
about overcoming stress and anxiety: How can we help the shoes overcome stress, fear and anxiety? How can we help them calm down?
about our experiences in overcoming anxiety: We can share an experience that caused us to feel anxious with our children and tell them how we overcame it. Then, we can ask them about an event which made them feel stressed and anxious, and how they were able to overcome these feelings.
about friends in kindergarten: We can look at the last page and half of the book, and ask our children about what they do and how they feel in kindergarten, what we feel about them, and what we think about them. Then we can talk to our children about their kindergarten friends: What do they do? How do they feel?
about courage: On page 28 of the book, Lina mentions the shoes and tells us about the scenarios in which they were able to be brave and overcome anxiety and fear. We can talk about those situations, we can describe each event and the feeling that goes with it, and we can remind our children of events where they overcame their stress and fears, and were also brave.
Let’s create
Safety box: With our child, we can prepare a special box, decorate it, and inside it, we can put a family picture and other items that make our child feel safe. In coordination with the teacher, we can ask that the box be placed in kindergarten, to be given to our child when they feel longing for home, and when they face some tension and anxiety.
Let’s Act
With our child, we can act out what they can do when they feel anxious and nervous in kindergarten (for example: to go to the teacher and share their feelings with them; to take their safety box, etc.).
Enjoy your reading!