Time to Share!

After the usual playtime and putting away the toys we began our morning around the theme of sharing. We sat down and read the first story in the book Dot and Dash Learn to Share by Emma Dodd.

As the characters are all animals, some of the children found it funny that they could pick up toys and play with them, especially the giraffe. We talked about how we feel when others won't share with us.

The children were exceptionally wiggly this morning, so I got out my "movement box" and we tossed the box and then did whatever movement was stated by the word on top. Each child had a turn tossing the box [sometimes more than once if the same word kept coming up] and everyone joined in moving to the word. It brought out some giggles, lots of movement, and we were more ready to sit when Story Hour continued.

It was now time to read our second book, Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney.

 In this story a llama and a gnu fight over a doll and tear off the arm. We stopped where the mother llama sewed on the arm and gave the kids, and the doll, a time out.

At this point we looked at the book Happy by Mies Van Hout which has pictures of fish expressing emotions. This was a challenge for the children. They mostly seemed to know "happy, sad and mad". We worked on a few others by giving hints to what the feeling should be, but it was still a struggle. We will continue to work on emotions in other sessions.

Next it was over to the craft table where I gave the children a sheet that said, "When no one will share with me I feel ____________."  The children then drew, or just colored the way they felt when that happened and we filled in the blank with the word they told us. Again, that familiar feeling, mad, was most often used.

I then talked about how sharing sometimes means sharing space and we played a game called "Sharks in the Water" where the children had to swim around an island until the music stopped and then quickly get on the island before the sharks got them. Each time the island got a bit smaller and we had to crowd together to allow everyone to share the space. Some of the moms even played sharks out to get us if we didn't get on the island!

Back to the carpet! We sat down and finished our llama story. We were happy to know that Nelly Gnu and Llama Llama figured out a way to cooperate and ended the day by sharing, becoming friends, and looking forward to playing together again some day.

I ended the morning by pairing up the students and giving each a sealed brown bag. They were then told that when they opened the bag they would need to share whatever they had that was different with their partner. Although some had to be assisted in seeing the differences, all did a very fine job of sharing the items and they were then able to eat the things they shared or they could take them home.

Some of the skills that were being developed in today's lessons were: Large muscle movement, sharing, recognizing feelings, cooperation, listening, following directions, and predicting.

Next week's lesson will be based around stars and the book/song, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Children's Librarian,
Mitzi Manthey