The child who cut into pieces the Christmas drawing we did the day before cut this one too straight away, so he was grounded and sent to his regular classroom with their usual teacher. Most children decided right away who they would give the card to, and chose mum & dad, or just one of them, or grandma. But there was one girl who said she wasn't going to give the card to anyone, and when I asked she said the card would be for herself. She did colour it and decorate it, but she didn't seem awfully happy. When the child who had been sent to their regular teacher came back, she also broke her card.
I found it odd, but when I started thinking about it, I thought that maybe Christmas is a difficult time for some children, and some of the things we make them do don't help. For instance, there are groups of students where roughly half of them have divorced parents. Maybe for some of those, giving them just one card and telling them to choose who to give it to is not that nice. Maybe they don't know who they are going to spend Christmas with yet, maybe the person they would like to give the card to is away.
Just like Christmas can stir things inside for adults, sometimes becoming disturbing, it can happen the same with children. But most of the time we think of them as being immune to such feelings, as if they lived in a fairy tale.
So, I thought that instead of making a card to give to somebody else, Christmas could be a good occasion to make a card for them, just to show. For instance, they could make a card where each of their classmates wrote something they liked about them, giving them a wide range of structures they could use:
- I like your... (hair, eyes, smile...)
- You are good at... (football, Math, drawing, making friends...)
- You are... (nice, a good friend, generous...)
That way, they would have something nice to keep for themselves and to show to whoever they wanted to, without having to choose anyone in particular.
iruzkinik ez:
Argitaratu iruzkina