A few days ago I talked about “respect” on my Instagram live. Did you watch it?
Funnily, the book I brought for this week’s blog post is about respect. You might be thinking that it is planned but it’s not. Today was the turn of letter R after letter Q last week and today’s blog post was planned before I learned about this. 😂 Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ll leave the link for the recording of that live in case you wanna check it out. 😉
I found a really creative play idea on Pinterest the other day and I wanted to find a way to incorporate this to my teaching. So here is this book.
Book “Quit Calling Me a Monster” by Jory John
It’s a monster’s story who didn’t want to be called “monster”.
When we hear “monster”, what do we think about?
Ask your child.
It will show our stereotypes about monster.
Like big, hairy, scary, weird, dangerous etc.
What are the characteristics of monster that your child find?
If we are talking to a toddler, we might want to say like “Oh you are right! That must be a monster!” Well because for toddler, knowing about something and listing the characteristics of that thing might be just amazing enough.
But if we are talking to a preschooler, we might want to think about teaching how to see things in a different perspective. Being able to see things in a different perspective is an essential skill to live in the world, with other people, because every person in the world can have a different point of view. Right?
This book “Quit …… Monster” can put children in the monster’s shoes.
It’s mostly the monster who is talking in the book. It’s like the monster’s lament/solo talk and a request for others. When you listen to the story, you will feel the monster’s pain.
When children see the world from the monster’s point of view and feel the monster’s pain, they can develop empathy. Empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” (definition from Oxford Languages). Empathy is important for developing growth mindset. Because to develop the growth mindset, we need to have an open mind and be able to work well with others to overcome the current challenges and go over the current limit.
Empathy is also related to respect.
We know, as adults, that we have to respect others and we have to respect each other. People with little empathy will not feel the strong need for respecting other people. Not being able to respect other people is one problem and the other problem is that they will have a difficulty of respecting themselves as well.
Some people might say that the book “Quit …… Monster” is just a funny complaining story of a silly monster. But, we are mindful people (😎) and we can help our children learn the great lessons from this funny book.
Alright!
So let me introduce the creative play that I first saw on Pinterest and modified it for my teaching.
Monster Puppet
(Monster who is using his words rather than being angry and hiding)
Materials
- Clothespin
- Monster picture
- Scissors
- double-sided tape
How To
Find a monster picture and print it out.
If you like my monster pictures, you can get this from Everyday Funday Shop.
Cut out the monsters.
Cut a monster picture at around the mouth area, in a straight line.
Tape the top part of monster picture on the top part of a clothespin.
Tape the bottom part of monster picture on the bottom part of the clothespin.
It’s just a fun prop that children can make after reading the book and use it next time again.
I think this mouth-opening monster puppet shows the important behaviour of the monster in the story – expressing one’s feelings and thoughts in words and trying to solve the problem.
-Watch it if you wanna hear more about self-respect.😉
Happy learning and quality time!
Teacher Gela 👩🏻🎀