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.