Kindergarten:Is It A Good Idea Or Bad Idea?

On November 23rd, Logan and I visited the Kindergarten class at Maunawili Elementary School. Logan came up with the lesson plan which was reading a book and coming up with a question to have a discussion. The book Mrs. T chose was called Jamaica's Find, and the kids really enjoyed listening to her read this book.

Jamaica's Find is about a girl named Jamaica who goes to the park on a regular basis and finds things on every trip she makes. One day Jamaica went to the park and she found a stuffed dog, she took it home to her mother and she had a liking in the stuffed animal and wondered where she had gotten it from. Jamaica felt guilty about keeping this stuffed dog that she brought home from the park so the next day she took it to the lost and found. That same day Jamaica sees a girl with her mother at the park and decided to ask her to play, but the girl said she had to find something before they play.

Jamaica realized that the girl may have been the potential owner of the stuffed animal and asked if that was what she had been looking for, and it was. 

The moral of the story was to be honest and if you found something and it doesn't belong to you, then you should give it back. After Mrs.T finished reading the story, we posed the question "Is it a good idea or a bad idea to keep something that doesn't belong to you?" Many of the students told us that it was a bad idea because the owner might get sad about loosing the item they had found. Then I asked how they would feel if they lost something and they saw the person with the item they had lost. Mario answered "I would go up to the person and ask them nicely to please give it back." Other students said that they would tell a teacher or an adult that they know who took their lost item.

Overall I thought this inquiry went pretty well because I know that kids sometimes have a hard time sharing and trying to control their behavior when it comes to conflicts between kids their age. Hopefully if a problem arises like this one, they will know how to solve it in a calmly manner. The fact that the kids are able to understand these types of situations is really surprising to me because they are only five or six years old with little experience.