I cannot believe that November is almost over, but here we are. I’ve spent this weekend grading papers and doing very little to foster any excitement for the Christmas season, so I’m particularly delighted to welcome our frog this week and instill a little holiday cheer!
An image of my festive frog, looking dapper in a waistcoat and scarf. He is sitting on a plush elephant chair in front of the lit Christmas tree. One arm jauntily occupies the armrest, while the other holds the rhyming prompt for December 1. The book Lights of Winter is on the chair beside him.
Since this is our first prompt, I’ll take a moment to explain my plan for formatting each day. I intend to lead with the prompt, followed by recommended materials, pose, and the actual activity. If you just want to get to it, you’re more than welcome to stop reading there. I’ll also go on to include a rationale for each day’s activity, along with a book recommendation. Read these only if you’re interested—they’ll be longer winded and more theoretically focused.
With that out of the way, here’s our first…
Rhyming Prompt: December 1
Well welcome, hello, fancy meeting you here!
I’ve come to your home to spread holiday cheer.
Every day this month, I’ll share a surprise;
Some are gifts, some are games, some will help you be wise.
I can’t wait to get started, and I’ve brought your first gift,
It’s the world in your hands: hope it gives you a lift.
I’m printing our rhyming prompts on cardstock four at a time to save time, ink, and paper, and you can, too. Download the first four prompts here as a PDF or here as a Microsoft Word document.
A close-up image of the first day’s rhyming prompt, printed on cream cardstock with a green border. I have also dropped some red sparkly sealing wax and created a frog imprint, then highlighted it with a gold felt-tipped pen, because my frog is extra. I mean, how else would you know it was authentic if it weren’t sealed? However, it’s clear that the frog isn’t particularly good at using sealing wax yet, and the effect is somewhat messy. It’s the thought that counts; he’ll get better throughout the month.
Other Materials:
Lights of Winter: Winter Celebrations Around the World, by Heather Conrad and DeForest Walker.
Suggested Pose:
Somewhere easy. My kids aren’t expecting this little frog, so I want him easily visible to cause a stir when they wake up.
Activity:
I can’t wait to have my kids meet the frog and name him. Once the initial excitement has died down, we’ll cuddle up and read this great book, which is all about different winter holiday celebrations worldwide. If you don’t have this book, your frog might share this National Geographic page with your kids, which details some of the same information. After we read, I’m going to emphasize how kind it is of our frog to visit, how we should make him comfortable while he is here, and how generous it is of him to bring us a gift.
Rationale:
Today is about scaffolding, relationship-building, and developing a more global understanding of human behavior and tradition. While it may seem silly to think about fostering a relationship with a plush toy, it is important that the frog is real and relatable for my children. That’s largely because empathy—the ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings and experiences—isn’t something that can be taught abstractly. Lauren Morril’s viral tweet “I don't know how to explain to you why you should care about other people," is so resonant precisely because empathy feels innate and unteachable. Morril’s relatable lament, and the repercussions of American individualism more broadly, drove me to research how experts suggest fostering empathy in our children. I may not be able to teach everyone how to care about other people, but couldn’t I at least figure out how to teach my own children?
While I have learned a lot about empathy development since then, one important takeaway will feel familiar to parents and educators alike: empathy education, like all education, is most successful when it is experiential. My hope is that the frog will be both a steward who guides my children to exemplary models of empathetic behavior and engaging perspective-taking projects, but also that he will be a relatable figure with whom they can practice building rapport despite the fact that he is just fabric and fluff.
While today’s activity is exceptionally simple, it is designed to meet several somewhat complicated aims:
The gift of the book will foster warm feelings for the frog, and make my children want to engage with him daily, even when the prompts are not accompanied by an external reward.
The frog’s gift-giving models pro-social behavior and generosity.
The book’s contents will encourage my children to engage in some rudimentary perspective-taking with other children around the world who have different holiday traditions. Beginning to recognize difference is an important turn away from solipsism.
The conversation surrounding the frog’s arrival and comfort also encourages the children to consider his needs and perspective. Ideally they will begin to creatively imagine how those needs are both similar and different from their own.
This also gives the children an opportunity to articulate the their own needs, which they have projected onto the frog, and which children rarely have the chance to do in moments of calm (i.e. when they are not urgently striving to have those needs met).
Book Recommendation:
This one’s a gimme: Lights of Winter, obviously.
Let’s have fun today, and I can’t wait for the rest of the month. Thank you all for joining me on this journey!