The Smartest Giant: Empathy



In these grouptime activities the children explored the role of EMPATHY in our journey to generosity.  As we read the story, Smartest Giant in Town by J. Donaldson, we realized that being generous involves understanding what others might think and how feel.  We are more likely to be generous to people we know but this story shows that we can also be generous to anyone who may need our help or kindness.  When we empathy helps us understand and value the needs of others. 

We also talked about showing appreciation to those who are generous to us like saying " Thank You" or giving hugs and smiles. 

















 The children made thank you card and crown to someone who shown them generosity.
On the crown they wrote what they understand about generosity and who they are thankful for. 








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Frienships start with a simple "Hello"

Image
     In this part of the inquiry the children were drawn to a story about a Boy and  a stray puppy who developed friendship as they go through the feelings of sadness, loneliness and in search of a friend. The story lines were catchy and simple enough that children repeatedly said the lines over and over again in their play. "......sad, ... no fun....all alone....why am I the only one?"       They were so attuned to the sadness of the characters that they even created their own dramatic play on the ideas of feeling alone and what to do when no one wants to play with you.  The story "Say Hello" by Jack and Michael Foreman explores the concepts of care, inclusion and open-mindedness.   At the end of the story both the boy and the dog were connected by acknowledging the presence of the other through a simple "hello". It shows us that a warm greeting and a smile is all it takes for friendships to flourish.  Christina asked...
Read more

Unit of Inquiry: Friendship

Image
    September is a wonderful time to be experiencing new and exciting things.  As we continue to learn the new ropes and routine in school we also make new connections and build new friendships along the way.  This current Unit of Inquiry will explore Friendships.  The aim of this unit is to help children develop an understanding of: How do we develop friendly relationships, how to foster friendly relationships and the giving and receiving of friendship. Who is your friend and why?      We began the formative unit (first week) with a simple task of asking the children to tell us about one special friend.  They decorated a ginger bread person and used that to represent and talk about this friend.  It was interesting to hear their responses.  Of course, most children talked about who they played with while others talked about their family like their siblings and moms as their best friends.  However there were some disa...
Read more

Yoga story: Lion and the Mouse

Image
 Before we began our Yoga story of the day the children greeted the beautiful Spring sunshine with their gentle, yet energized breath. I find Sun Salutation poses are the best to revitalize and refresh the mind and body. These poses are dynamic yet focused so provide children the space to be actively engaged and be in their own space while doing the poses. Since it's Spring it also gives us the opportunity to pay gratitude to the morning sunshine and embrace its blessings as we think about the growing and changing that is happening around us Sun salutation and sky arrow poses To continue the theme of  Gratitude and Generosity, we acted the Lion and the Mouse fable using different yoga poses. The children enjoyed pretending to be the irritated Lion and the scared mouse. We discussed the lesson of the story: that each of us is important and helpful no matter what size. Then each child were given a task of helping me clean and organize the classroom. ...
Read more