Generous: Is There Enough?

The children were very excited this morning to show me the vegetable they brought. I showed Bela what I brought to contribute . . . a stone. "A stone! That's crazy!" he exclaimed. Tyreese forgot to bring a vegetable and his mom called to say that he had carrots in his lunch but kind Tyreese had already thought to take them from his lunch kit and add them to our tray.

Some of the children are familiar with the story Stone Soup; a community hides their food, unwilling to share with the strangers in town for fear they haven't got enough. It would seem that almost every culture has a version of this story - we'll explore a few more in the coming weeks and compare similarities and differences.

The children happily chatted as they cut vegetables and we discussed who would eat the soup. 

"Let's share with everyone, that would be generous." Tyreese

"But what about the kids that aren't here today. We should save some 

soup so they can have some when they're here." Sofia

After all the vegetables were cut Billy wanted to cut the stone. Bela initiated sharing his knowledge that stones can't be cut and showed Billy. The other children wanted to try too and indeed a stone cannot be cut . . . or at least not with a butter knife! 

Generous: Miss Spider's Tea Party

We've been talking a lot about sharing with others but today we focused on another question: 

What if you want to share with someone but they don't want to receive it? 

Or, you don't want to receive something that someone wants to share with you? Then what? 

The children could think of times that someone drew them a picture but they didn't want it, 

or when they wanted someone to play their game and they didn't want to play,

or when someone wanted to give them a hug and they didn't want it.

The children identified how it feels to be rejected and the conflicting feelings they feel when they're offered something they don't want. Oh the complexities of life!

In Miss Spider's Tea Party her invitations to tea are declined. The children identified that this was because the insects were afraid Miss Spider might eat them.

"Are there people you are afraid of?
"Big people" - Michael
"Bad guys" - Billy
"Sometimes you can be afraid of policemen." - Bela

I pretended to be Miss Spider and we had a tea party! It took some time getting through the selection of teas we had to decide on the two we would try. Everyone decided what kind of insect the would be and we had a delightful tea party!

Generous: A Cake All For Me!

In today's story the main character plans to bake a cake and eat it all. 

"That's not generous." said William

The character was home alone, can you still be a generous person even when there's no one around to share with? The children all thought yes. At the end of the story more friends come requesting cake, the pig says yes and comments on how it feels nice to share. 

The story provided the children an opportunity to practice number recognition as the rhymes counts to twenty. I read the story again and the children took turns finding the numbers 1 to 20 and lined them up in a number line. Most of the children recognized 1 through to 10 but it would seem that most need more practice recognizing 11 to 20.

Sharing does feel nice. I suggested that we bake a cake like the pig did in the story and all agreed. Who will we share it with? Everyone agreed to share it will all the children and so they made a poster and an announcement. A child from another group came to me and said "They're being generous."

Generous: The Doorbell Rang!

In Pat Hutchin's The Doorbell Rang two children share a plate of cookies but before they can eat the doorbell rings and more friends arrive to share the cookies. This continues until they are left with just one cookie each when the door bell rings yet again! What should they do?
"They can break the cookies in half" suggests William

We re-enacted the story using props and the children practiced counting and one-to-one correspondence.

We acted out the story using candy hearts instead of cookies. I was surprised to see how quickly some of the children got the concept of dividing a large number into even groups. In the end Billy said he didn't want to eat his, he doesn't like them. We discussed what could be done . . . throw it away or give it away. Billy decided to give his to William. Bela and Tyreese felt this was unfair - what a great opportunity to explore this side of generosity! Bela suggested we get more candy hearts so everyone can have two but in the end I explained that this is sometimes the way it is - sometimes we receive someone's generosity and sometimes we don't.

The children displayed their thinking by creating a picture. They traced two circles for plates; one for themselves and one for a friend. They got 6 cookies and could decide how to share them - all ideas were accepted, there is no right or wrong idea.

Generous: To Share Or Not To Share

Using the props I retold the story The Big Block of Chocolate. The empty chocolate bar wrapper prompted the children to tell Sophia and Tyreese about the decision they made to share the chocolate bar with the group and not all the daycare children. Sophia noted "We (she and Tyreese) didn't get any chocolate, what are we going to do about that?" I promised to share an idea after we did some thinking work.

Everyone could recall a time either they didn't want to share something or someone didn't want to share with them. Why does this happen? What could a person be thinking when they don't want to share? I drew the characters from the story one by one providing the children the opportunity to recall the sequence of events and above the characters picture I drew a thought bubble. I asked the children to suppose what each of the characters might be thinking when they decided not to share the chocolate but hide it somewhere so they can eat it all themselves later in secret. The ant decided to share the chocolate - what motivated him to do this? What was he thinking? The photo shows the children's ideas.

I hadn't brought any food to share so that we might experience what it's like to share with all the children in the school but suggested that the children might like to choose something from their lunch kits that we could use to make a sharing plate. Everyone agreed with enthusiasm and straight away went to retrieve some food. The children were very excited and after group time went to the other children to announce what they were doing.

Generous: New Unit!

Central Idea: Being generous can help us connect with one another

Lines of Inquiry:

We are generous beings

People have different understandings of generosity

There is give and take in generosity

Today the Fire and Earth groups joined together to begin the unit. 

I asked the children what they thought the word generosity might mean:

No - Billy                          Being kind - Zoe

Yes - Ryleigh                    Going for a walk - Eva

Go - Matthew                    Sharing - Allye

Car - Michael                    Being thankful - William

Before reading a story called The Big Block of Chocolate I told the children that some of the characters are generous and some are not. After reading the story we would discuss what they thought generous might mean after thinking about what happened in the story.  In the story the characters come upon a block of chocolate one by one and hide it so they can eat it all themselves later, except for the ant who calls his brothers and sisters to share. The discussion we had showed me that the children understood that one idea of being generous means sharing and that all the characters were not generous, except for the ant.

 

What should we do with our chocolate?
The children wanted to share it! Should we share it with just our group or should we share it with everyone? The children voted and I asked them to explain their thinking. There is no right or wrong answer - the point it to have the children think about their thinking. Dear Matthew was in quite the conundrum, as you will see . . .
Share with Everyone:
Bela - because it's kind
Eva - because it's nice
Zoe - because it's kind
Billy - we can share with everyone because there's enough
Share with just Us:
Allye - because the other kids are still working in their groups
Chloe - I don't want to share with everyone
William - there's not enough
Ryleigh - because there's just a little bit
Michael - there's not that much chocolate
Matthew - We can eat the chocolate now and they won't know. . . .but if they find out they will be upset. Maybe the ones who don't get chocolate can have a freezie, but then the ones who didn't get a freezie will be sad . . . I don't know, that's all I think.