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