That's what friends are for!

Our focus is to understand the word "function" as one of the concepts of our unit.  First, I showed them everyday materials like markeres, spoons, bowls, sun hat, scissors, etc and they each described what people use them for? We turned this into a guessing game which made it more fun and interesting. Then I asked them to think about their friends and share what they think friends are for; what friends do for us? What do we do for our friends?  They said friends are for: hugging, spending time with like sleepovers and dinners, and to play with.

Late that afternoon Luka proudly said:
"I have a new friend,Tai!"
Orin & Pauline working on number place cards
Francine & Alexis exclaimed:
"We did it together!!" 
Brainstorming ideas




We read the story "That's what friends are for" by Heide & Van Cleif which is about friends HELPING each other. We added "helping" to our list of the function of friends and discussed what helping a friend might look like.  Orin said that cleaning up toys is helpful. Tai describes that smiling is helpful to someone who's sad. Then we practiced being helpful with one another by working together. I put them in pairs and worked on a task. The key thing is to cooperate, take turns, and to help each other if they get stuck.  All of them had fun and felt so proud of how they worked together.




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