Rhyming Prompt: December 18
One thing I love doing is planning surprises
As I’ve done for you. It emphasizes
How well I know you, and what you’ll enjoy—
If I didn’t know that these rhymes might annoy!
I think you should try it for one you adore.
They’ll be so grateful! And what is more
You’ll have the pleasure of seeing their smile
When you show them some fun in your own special style.
Download the prompts for December 17-20 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 18 prompt. It is printed on cream cardstock with a green border and nestled in a lit Christmas tree. There is a gold wax seal of a frog in the lower righthand corner.
Other Materials:
TBD, it depends on what your child chooses for the activity!
Suggested Pose:
Frantz is perched on a tower of large fort-building blocks, as if to suggest one particularly easy activity to plan for a sibling.
My pose is quite self-serving today. I have Frantz perched on the fort-building blocks in an effort to steer my older daughter in that general direction.
Activity:
Work with your child to plan a fun activity for someone else. This might be a sibling, someone else who lives in your house, a pet, or even the frog himself. I’ll have both of my kids plan and implement a fun activity for each other. If I had to guess, Clementine (4) will want to build a fort filled with board books for Lucy (age 2) and Lucy will want to set up a tea party for Clementine. It should be pretty cute.
Rationale:
This is all about perspective-taking. In order to pull this off, your child will need to carefully consider what someone else would enjoy.
Book Recommendation:
This is an odd choice, because it’s a picture book about Ramadan, but bear with me. Lailah’s Lunchbox, by Reem Faruqi and Lea Lyon, is a lovely book about a young girl fasting for Ramadan for the first time. The reason I like it for this activity is because it gestures toward the ways in which acts of kindness need to be specifically tailored for different recipients. Because Lailah is fasting, she comes to school without lunch, and she is initially reluctant to tell anyone why. Her classmates and teacher offer her beautiful and tempting food, which is objectively kind, but of course because Lailah is trying to fast, it is contextually unhelpful. Once Lailah reveals her reason for fasting she is allowed to enjoy the lunch hour in the library so she won’t be tempted, and the class is excited to learn about her culture. You can watch a read aloud here.
An image of the cover of Lailah’s Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story by Reem Faruqi and Lea Lyon.