Friendship: Giving and Receiving

This week Earth Group read the story My Friend is Sad by Mo Willems .  This is a story about an elephant named Gerald who is sad and his friend Piggie who dresses up as a clown, robot and cowboy to cheer him up!

As a pre-reading activity, I asked the children to think about why they feel sad sometimes.  The children feel sad when their siblings hit them, when they miss mommy, and when someone breaks their structures.  Then I asked what someone could do to make them feel better.  The children thought that not hitting or yelling and keeping hands "away from their structures" would make them feel better.

After reading the book, I asked the children why Gerald the Elephant was so sad?  There is no explanation for this in the story.  What would you do if you came to school and a friend was sad?  How would you know that the friend was sad?  Here were some of their ideas:

I've seen a boy crying at school a lot and I don't know why he was sad but he was crying so he was sad.  Mary talked to him so he would feel special and not so sad.  Then I asked: What if Mary asked you to help him, what would you do?   I could make him a card or just let him play with my lego speed boat.

I ask what's wrong?  Why are you so sad?  Then I asked: What if the friend was so sad that they couldn't tell you why, what would you do then?  I would get ice or a tissue.

What is it called when we get a tissue for someone or make someone a card?  Caring !  After reading the story the children recalled that Piggie was caring because he dressed up to cheer up Gerald.  Allye noticed that at the end of the story, "Gerald really only wanted to play with Piggie anyways."

The children colouring their books

Matthew sequencing his story

Matthew cutting the pages of his book

The children created their own stories:

Eva: Elephant says- I like Piggie.  Piggie says - Do you want to walk with me?  They walk together.  They are sharing ice cream and then they go to buy some treats.

Damon: Piggie says - Do you want to jump in the pool?  Elephant replies: Yes!  Piggie says - Do you want to play in the park?  Elephant replies, "Yes!!."  Elephant says, do you want to play in the sand table?

On Thursday, we re-read the story and shared the children's friendship stories.  Next week, the children will share a story of friendship again with the puppets they made today.  As there were a few children missing from group today, it will be interesting to see which children will share their puppets next week!

Tada !  Nico's Piggie

Allye's Piggie

Elaine's Elephant and Piggie are already friends !

Friendship: what does it feel like?

Elaine creating her Food Fight Music with the bells

In the Sandwich Swap story, the whole class became divided:  one group loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the other loved hummus and pita sandwiches.  This division caused chaos and a food fight ensued! 

In my experience children express their feelings in everything they do.  So today we discussed what feelings come up with the food fight and food sharing and then the children played the bells according to how they felt.  There was a remarkable difference in the way the children held the mallet and struck the bells in both scenarios. 

Here is a sample:
Matthew playing Food Fight music with the bells
Allye playing Food Sharing music with the bells
After everyone had a turn, we discussed how they felt:
The children thought that the Food Fight Music was busy, angry, and too loud
The children thought the Food Sharing Music was lovely, like a song, and like birds singing


There are many ways for us to get to know each other.  I shared what I knew about a few children today and then I asked them to share a little about themselves with the group.  I wrote their ideas on the back of their pictures and made it into a puzzle..  The idea is to learn about your friend, guess who it is, think about what they look like, turn over the pieces and put the friend puzzle together.  Today we learned about Zoe, Allye, and Matthew.  We will continue this at the end of each session.

The Allye puzzle

Nico and Allye having fun putting the Matthew puzzle together.

Nico

The Sandwhich Swap: Appreciating Differences and the Function of Friendship

On Tuesday we read The Sandwich Swap to explore what the function of friendship. Before reading the book we had a little discussion.....

Question: What would life be like without friends?
Matthew:  I do everything with some friends, and Dakota, and my sister and mom and dad and Izzy!  I guess I would just be bored by myself without friends !

Zoe:  That's silly, there's no such thing as no friends !

Eva: I always have friends around because I have Zoe, we were together in my mummy's tummy.

Nico: Sometimes I play by myself and I like it but I like playing with friends and I like to play with teachers too.

Damon:  I need friends to play ninja turtles, at least one friend, otherwise the game doesn't work.

Allye: There's no such thing as having no friends.  When I'm at school I play with my friends and when I'm at home I play with Ashton in the garden and that's all.

The children have a good grasp of the importance of friendship in their lives.  Friends are there to share their lives with, whether that means playing games, eating lunch, going on vacation, having birthday parties, and sharing family time.  The children instinctively blend family and friends, not differentiating between the two.  It's also interesting to note that the children can not imagine not being in community.

That discussion lead me to ask..
 

Do we have to be friendly to people who are not our friends?

Matthew:  I try to be nice to everyone so that's friendly but I can't play with everyone at the same time

Nico:  If I just smile and then I'm friendly.

Eva:  I don't remember all of the names of everyone but I know some of the names.

Zoe:  I can still play and I don't remember the names, we just have fun at the playground !

Allye:  I think I smile when I'm happy and doing something I like.  I smile at people I know and I don't smile to my friends if my friends make me frustrated.  

Before reading The Sandwich Swap I asked the children what "swap" meant.  The children thought that the teachers swap the floor of the food and dirt "all the time."  So, we did a little "swap" experiment to show that swapping means trading.

Elaine is swapping her purple lego for Matthew's blue lego.

This is a story about two friends who had many things in common except their lunches!  They almost lost their friendship until they learned to appreciate their differences by swapping and tasting each other's sandwiches.  We created a sandwich board of our own with two categories:

Friendly (happy face) and unfriendly (sad face)
Friendly traits: playful, open minded, hugs, sharing, changing your mind, listening

Unfriendly traits: saying "eww gross", teasing, not listening, judging

Damon putting his idea on the sandwich board

The children filling the sandwich with butter, eggs, blueberries, jam, hotdogs, cheese, cookies, and jube-jubes

On Thursday we will explore what friendship feels like.  In the story when the children were sharing everyone was happy but when they were not friendly, there was a food fight !  We ended the class with a few ideas:

Matthew:  We can only share food if we bring enough for everybody, then we are happy just like the story.  I was happy to share chocolate chip cookies with everybody at school.

Food Sharing

Food Fight

Allye:  That fight looks sticky and messy,  who will clean it up?  I don't know but I do not want to clean it up.

Friendship: It's Not Always Easy

It takes a firm apple to stand up to his "friends". 

When Mac, an apple, meets Will, a worm, they become fast friends, teaching each other games and even finishing each other's sentences. But apples aren't supposed to like worms, and Mac gets called "rotten" and "bad apple." At first, Mac doesn't know what to do--it's never easy standing up to bullies--but after a lonely day without Will, Mac decides he'd rather be a bad apple with Will than a sad apple without him.

Being friends with someone in the face of peer pressure isn't easy, but Mac realized that a true friendship means acceptance and appreciation.   We then had an interesting discussion.  There were six teasing apples teasing Will and Mac.  Which number is bigger, 6 or 2?  Six is bigger!  Could you leave 6 friends tom play with just one friend?

Matthew:  Maybe, but we would have to play something really fun.  With six friends I could play family and that's fun.  I can't play that with just one friend.

Nico: I like to play with just one friend anyways or sometimes two.

Eva:  I would like to play with Zoe

Zoe:  I would play with Eva and 3 other friends only - that's enough.

The children interpreted the stories in their pictures:

Nico: Mac and Will are happy when playing tag together, and sad when being teased

Eva: the worm and apple got sad because they have nothing to play with.

Zoe: Mac and Eva are sad together because they got lost together

Matthew: Slug is not very fast.  Apple always wins and says 'sorry about that.'

Allye: The bad apples are loud and teasing the good apple and worm.

Allye:  The mac apple and worm are smaller than the bad apples but it's okay because they really like each other.

Friendship Train: finding friends

Last week the children decided that they loved the idea of many friends on a train, having fun together.  What is the purpose of our train?  Where will we go and what will we do?  

"The train will go to different fun places to find friends"  Matthew

"The train can just be parked, it doesn't have to go anywhere, people just look into to find friends"  Allye

Once they puzzled their train together, we added velcro pieces and imagined who could be the "conductor"   where would we go to find a friend?

Matthew: I would go to the swimming pool or gymnastics and find friends to play with me

Allye:  I would go the Granville Island, there's always other kids there

Elaine:  I would go over there (points to table) and sit with Angela and eat some snack

Zoe: I would go to the playground, because that's where we go to play

Eva:  I can just play with Zoe and mummy at home

Nico:  Just right here we are playing now

Over the next few weeks we make a board game out of our train to explore this unit.  

Children are puzzling their train together

Allye is taking a turn being the conductor

Friendship: what does it mean?

When I asked the children what it means to be a friend, they focused on friendly things to say, like "you can play"; "no thank-you" ; "sorry" and " I am not allowed to share my snacks " and "do you need an ice pack?"  Over the course of this unit we will explore the both the words and actions behind friendship.

In order to stir up some ideas about what it means to be a friend we read the book My Best, Best Friend by Lauren Child.  It's a story about two best freinds Lola and Lotta, who do everything together, but when Lotta befriends a new girl named Evie, Lola feels as though she has lost her best  friend Lotta forever.  Alas, it wasn't true!  Evie made a new friend in Charlie, and was still able stay friends with both Lola and Lotta !

I chose this book because we have a lot of new and returning faces at Creative Minds, and the children are trying to sort out how to make new friends and maintain their old friendships.  After reading the story, I asked the children a few questions:

Is it okay to have more than one friend?  Yes

Do you always play with the same friends?  No

What do you do if you want to play with someone different?  What do you say?  What do you do with your body or your face?  What would you look like?

Matthew:  I just say, sorry, I'm not playing with you right now, but maybe later

Allye:  I just say today I'm playing with Ryleigh, or something like that
Eva: I don't ever say anything like that, I just like to play

Zoe: If someone said that I think that would be mean

Nico: It's okay to play with whoever wants to play with me.

As a group, we started on our project to symbolize friendship and we began by decorating a canvas with their hand prints.  We then discussed what to make out of the canvas?  Elaine pointed to the heart on her shirt, and Matthew suggested a bus or a train because " it could hold a lot of friends."  We will decide next week...

Matthew and Elaine very focused as they paint their hands

Matthew choose brown and orange because "it's nice for Fall time."

Elaine chose blue like the sky

Allye wanted rainbow hands

Nico thought that it tickled!

Our friendship canvas- a work in progress !