This week we read
Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. I love this book because of the wonderful character ed lesson it
teaches the students. For those of you haven’t read Chrysanthemum, she is
an adorable little mouse with a very large name. The little mice in her
class tease her for having such a “strange and long name.” It is a clear
depiction of bullying that the students can really relate to.
A coworker let me in on a great
little activity that she has done with this book and I was more than excited to
try it with my class. You start with a medium sized heart (any color) cut
out from construction paper. Tell the students that this is
Chrysanthemum’s Heart. It is perfect and smooth and full of happiness.
Discuss how our heart can fell “crushed or crumpled” when someone says
something mean to you. Students love sharing stories about a time they
felt hurt or crushed by someone’s mean words. As you read the story have
the students sit in a circle and pass the heart around the classroom. Each time
that a character in the story teases Chrysanthemum by saying something mean,
the student holding her heart crumples it up into a ball. There are
characters in the story who say nice things to help cheer Chrysanthemum up,
such as her parents and teacher. During those moments, uncrumple the heart and
smooth it out. By the end of the book, the heart is ripped and torn and
full of creases. The children love seeing how kind words can repair her
heart (we even put some band aids over the rips). They can also see how
the wrinkles (caused by mean words) will never go away fully.
When the story was finished we hung
the heart in our classroom to always remind us of how important it is to be
kind to others. When someone is critical or mean to another student all I
have to do is say, “remember Chrysanthemum’s heart” and the kids instantly stop
in their tracks and rethink what they will say to make it kind.
Here is a photo of our heart after reading the story.
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