Friendship and Sharing: Story and Art Activity

Hi, today I’m going to be showing you, one way, that I would show children ages four thru five how to be a good friend to their classmates. So, I would start off by reading a story, “The Rainbow Fish” by Marcus Pfister. And the story is about this beautiful fish, who was blessed with some, so many great scales, that none of his other friends, he was very unique, and none of his other friends had these scales, and they admired his scales. And one day this brave, one of his brave friends, this little blue fish, came up and asked him if he can have one of his scales. Well rainbow fish was just appalled that he would even asked him that and said to go away, and leave me alone. But because the little blue fish was so persistent, and kept asking he decided, okay, I’ll just share one. Well, rainbow fish was amazed at how he felt when he shared this, this little scale that one of his shiny scales. It made him feel so good in fact, that he shared his scales with many of his friends. All of his friends. And, he shared so many, that in the end he only has one beautiful, shiny scale left. So, he says to himself I may not be the most beautiful fish in the ocean anymore but I and happy. After I read, would read this story to the children, then I would talk to the children about, what a little bit about the story and how they feel when they have shared something, and we would talk a little bit about that, and then we would do an activity. For the activity we would need, you would need to get a picture of fish. I happen to have this one that is set up to use with dot markers, but you can use any picture of the fish. I just use this one. It’s one I had on hand today, and then you’ll need some of these little dots, that are just used, usually you can get them at the store for using for garage sale. Um, some glue and then I happen to have these large sequin’s. They’re different colors, but you can use shiny stickers. I’ve even used aluminum foil, which is actually, what this looks more like anyway. So, I would have the children go to the table, and I would give each one of them a copy of the fish. I would be, what I would want to do is I would want to give each child a different color. Like child number one would have red, child number two would have blue, and so on. So, then I would encourage them to begin decorating their fish, by putting the dot on and continue, and what, during this I would be talking about what it takes to be a good friend, and I would encourage them to share. So that their fish could be more colorful. And then, as I see them share if child number two walks over to this childhood and says would you like one of my blue and it’s usually only takes once, when they see another child get one of these shiny ones, then everyone’s sharing. So, then when I see that I would take one of these and just glue it right on, so that they have their own shiny fin, and this, or shiny scale, and this is, they could go take this home, and tell their family all about how they got that shiny scale. And then, we would wrap it up by talking again, about what it takes to be a good friend, and how they feel when I share and the qualities of being a good friend.