Rhyming Prompt: December 16
Since I arrived we’ve done many good deeds,
We’ve listened, and learned, and tried to fill needs,
But one thing I’ve learned now that I know your heart
Is that you’ve had a generous soul from the start.
I’ve given you prompts to do many nice things,
And we’ve recognized all the joy kindness brings,
But more important than that is just knowing yourself.
Why don’t you go get coloring things from the shelf?
Then draw a self-portrait of you as a being,
Your generous self, whom I have been seeing.
Download the prompts for December 13-16 here as a PDF or here as a Microsoft Word Document (you may have already printed these—I’m just re-posting them here for convenience).
A close-up image of the December 16 prompt. It is printed on cream cardstock with a green border and a green wax imprint of a frog. It is nestled in a lit Christmas tree.
Other Materials:
Crayons, markers, or paints and paper. I’ll be breaking out these Crayola multicultural crayons today.
Suggested Pose:
Frantz is showing off his art skills! He has drawn his own self-portrait, and it waiting with supplies for the kids to draw their own.
Frantz is sitting on our coloring table beside his own self-portrait. The prompt and the box of “colors of the world” crayons are beside him.
Activity:
Have your kids draw their own self-portraits. It might be fun for them to use a mirror for this exercise, but it’s not necessary, since you want them to focus on how they feel as a person more than how they look. It does not matter if the picture looks like them at all, in fact. It only matters that the picture represents their best, most empathetic self.
Rationale:
In the Introduction of Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. famously opined that “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be” (1966, v). It’s a book about pretending to be a Nazi during WWII and how that pretense can curdle your insides. Vonnegut tweaks the adage of actions speaking louder than words; for him, actions speak louder than self-image. He writes: “If I’d been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides” (1966, vii). As Vonnegut insinuates, those insides that are secretly virtuous won’t save any lives, and they certainly won’t change how you’re remembered. You are your actions, whether you see it that way or not.
For the last two weeks, we have been helping our children perform empathy, and now we want to use Vonnegut’s observation to help them realize that those actions define their character. They have comforted a sad “friend,” they have donated to people and animals who need assistance, they have given up beloved snacks to preserve an environment that is so essential for animals and people alike, and they have practiced inhabiting another’s shoes. We want them to internalize the idea that they have been living empathetically, and therefore they are empathetic people. The hope is to encourage them to continue to practice empathy even after the frog has left, simply because it is part of who they see themselves to be. If empathy is part of their self-identity, they won’t just be the type of people who volunteer at a soup kitchen for Thanksgiving; they’ll be the people who support their community at all times.
Book Recommendation:
The book I am Human, by Susan Verde and Peter H. Reynolds, pairs very well with this exercise, partially because it is about seeing empathy as part of our humanity. You can watch a read aloud of the book here. If you have older kids, today might be a great day to consider It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way, by Kyo Maclear & Julie Morstad. This picture book is exquisitely beautiful and is about Japanese internment, the importance of representation, and how to help others see you as you see yourself through artistic expression. You can watch a very kind teacher read the book to her students here.
The cover of It Began With a Page, by Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad.