December 4: Share the Snacks

Rhyming Prompt: December 4 

I woke up hungry, tummy growling so loud,

I worried that I might have woken you up!

And as I was finding a snack, I was wowed

By the good things in your home on which I could sup.

I was thinking we might want to share some of this;

That all of these treats might bring someone else bliss.

Perhaps we could bring someone something to eat,

So some other person could feel this replete.

Alternatively, if you won’t be giving food or food-related aid, you might consider:

I woke up hungry, tummy growling so loud;

When I was a tadpole I was sometimes too proud

To admit that my family had less than enough,

And my mealtime choices were often quite tough.

Now I’ve gotten lucky, and I wanted to share,

When life gives you plenty, that seems only fair.

If everyone everywhere gave when they could,

Then everyone’d eat just like everyone should.

Download the first four prompts 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). If you’d like to get a jump on the next few days, you can download the prompts for December 5-8 here as a PDF and here as a Microsoft Word document.

An image of the December 4 prompt printed on cream cardstock with a green border. The card has a red wax seal with a frog impression, highlighted in gold. It is nestled in a lit Christmas tree.

Other Materials:

Up to you entirely. See the Activity section for more detail.

Suggested Pose:

Frantz is hiding out in our fruit bowl, where he went searching for snacks.

Frantz the Frog is sitting in a fruit bowl holding the December 4 prompt. There is a Calathea in the background.

Activity:

The goal today is to think about food, and, if you can stomach it, to think about food insecurity more generally. A recent analysis from researchers at Northwestern found that nearly 30% of U.S. households with children are currently food insecure, up from the already bleak 13.6% pre-pandemic. I want to leave today’s prompt extremely open-ended because we are all facing different and uniquely challenging circumstances.

If you and your family are food secure right now, it would be an excellent time to consider a donation to someone who is currently less fortunate. Food for Lane County has lots of ways to donate, whether with funds, food, or even by delivering meals to seniors. You could also participate even more personally; have you been meaning to bring some treats to an older neighbor, or even offer to grab them some groceries? Would you like an excuse to bake too many cookies and deliver them to a friend, even if it’s just because it would bring them some cheer? Are you helping to raise funds for/put together holiday food boxes (like the amazing Nest members here)? You can choose any of these options. All of them give you a chance to chat with your children about empathy and, to whatever extent you deem fit, food justice. The important points to hit are:

1. Lots of people struggle with food insecurity. That’s always been true, but it is especially true because a lot of people have not been able to work during the pandemic.

2. There are some systems in place to help our friends and neighbors who are food insecure. When we can contribute to those systems, we absolutely should.

3. Both domestically and worldwide, humans produce more than enough food to feed everyone. Therefore the only shame surrounding food insecurity is that it exists at all. We should think creatively about how we can fix broken systems that allow some to be wasteful, and others to suffer. But for my two- and four-year-olds, I cast this as hypothetical scenarios: if you had too much to eat, would it be better to share it or throw it away? Would you eat more simply if it meant everyone could have as much as they need to thrive?

If you and your family are in Eugene/Springfield and are food insecure right now, and are comfortable doing so, send me a message by the end of the day on December 3 (either through this site, our Insta page, or Facebook Messenger). I’ll head out by 4:30 p.m. on December 4 with some treats that your frog can give your kids that evening. In your message, let me know your address, any details that’ll make it easier to find your house in the dark, any dietary restrictions, and how many kiddos in your household. It stays between you and me.

Rationale:

Over the past year our already inadequate social safety net has failed us almost entirely. Millions of Americans are out of work or precariously employed, many of us have incurred unexpected expenses and losses during the pandemic or this summer’s wildfires, and little help has come. By encouraging our children to respond to a community need—be it through mutual aid, charitable aid, or simply person-person giving—we’re helping them understand how empathy makes our communities stronger.

Book Recommendation:

There are a few good books on food insecurity, but many of them are focused internationally, and I think it’s important to take this moment to think about hunger at home. I like Maddi’s Fridge by Lois Brandt and Vin Vogel for this, which describes two close friends, their very different refrigerators, and what to do about it. You can watch a read-aloud of the story here.

A picture of the cover of Maddi’s Fridge, by Lois Brandt and Vin Vogel.

December 3: Feed the Birds

Rhyming Prompt: December 3

I went out for a walk in the chilly dawn

And I noticed some friends hanging out on the lawn,

There were several small birds, cuddled up for heat,

And they mentioned that they would like something to eat!

In the spirit of giving, I thought we could make

A festive bird feeder of which they’d partake.

Download the first four prompts 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 closeup image of the prompt for December 3, nestled in a lit Christmas tree. It is printed on cream cardstock with a green border, and has a red wax seal of a frog highlighted in gold.

Other Materials:

• Pinecones gathered with your kids on a nature walk

• Peanut butter, suet, lard, or vegetable shortening

• Birdseed

• String or twine (8-10 inches)

Suggested Pose:

Frantz is ready for birdwatching at our house!

A picture of Frantz the frog sitting in a windowsill. He is wearing a pair of kids binoculars around his neck, and has the December 3 prompt beside him along with an old copy of A Guide to Field Identification: Birds of North America.

Activity:

Smear the sticky stuff on the pinecone, roll it in seeds, tie it with twine, and hang it up high, hopefully where no neighborhood cats are likely to lurk. Then watch the fun! More detailed directions (and some choice hints, like heat your peanut butter for easier application) can be found here.

I’ll also be looking at our local bird book and this article, which does a great job of helping you identify your local birds if you’re in Oregon and aren’t already an expert.

While we are observing the birds, I’m planning to ask the kids lots of pointed questions about how the birds’ use their bodies. Birds have eyes on the sides of their heads, not in front; how does this impact how they see the bird feeder? How does this change how they move? Birds are believed to have better color perception than humans; let’s make up colors you wish you could see! How do they move their wings when they aren’t in flight? How do you think it would feel to grip a branch that way with your toes? This can be under the guise of trying to identify the birds if your kids are older or reluctant.

Once the bird feeder loses some of its allure, I’m going to suggest to the kids that we pretend to be birds for a bit. Because my kids are two and four, this will be a rambunctious and messy event, complete with sloppy construction paper wings, leaping between couches, and scream-squawking. Why would I want to do this to myself and my furniture? Read on.

Rationale:

My kids, like most, are totally enamored by animals. “I care for all animals,” my four-year-old insists while refusing to eat a bite of chicken. But despite this, she’s still likely to get overexcited and play too roughly with our ancient, fifteen-pound dog. In his book The Age of Empathy, biologist Frans de Waal notes that while chimps will imitate the behavioral routines of adult humans, it can take a year to teach them a simple set of actions, while human children can learn the same thing in an afternoon. He suggests the time lapse is not just because the children are more intelligent than the apes, but because the chimps are being asked to relate across species lines, which is always a bigger challenge (de Waal, 2009). Feeding birds is a fun, festive wintertime activity, but I’m hoping the close avian observation can also lead to some improved cross-species relations.

By asking our kids to think carefully about what it feels like to live in a bird’s body, we are helping them to imagine the (esoteric word alert, but bear with me) Umwelt of the animal. The Umwelt is a German word for perceptual environment, and it acknowledges that our sensory capabilities influence how we make sense of the world around us. I first encountered the concept of the Umwelt in the work of Jakob von Uexküll, who believed that by studying the biological apparatus of specific animals you could develop plausible theories of how they experienced the world. His ideas have been taken up by more widely-read philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Giorgio Agamben, and led to the formation of the field of biosemiotics. To put this simply, von Uexküll believed that we cannot relate to others if we imagine them to be just like us, only different. Only when we can truly imagine the lived experience of inhabiting a body with different abilities and limitations than our own can we capably empathize with and understand them.

My kids like to pretend to be puppies, but their go-to imaginative games are more heavily informed by Disney than by our actual dogs. That’s still an important and creative stage of childhood development, but I feel confident that a little direction will help them take it to the next level. Right now they don’t really consider how dogs and cats behave, and they’re certainly not perspective-taking in any meaningful capacity. By asking them to think carefully about how the world interacts with the birds’ senses, we’re playing a fun game and constructing a phenomenological schema that will help them think more deeply about other beings experiences.

Book Recommendation:

We’ll dig into Curious Kids Nature Guide: Explore the Amazing Outdoors of the Pacific Northwest, by Fiona Cohen and Marni Fylling for this activity. It’s one of my all-time favorite books to read with my kids (along with Julia Rothman’s Anatomy books). It always helps them ask and answer excellent questions about the world they inhabit.

A copy of the book Curious Kids Nature Guide on a tufted gray ottoman.

Be sure to follow us on social! Join our Facebook group here, and follow us on Instagram at @frogsandempathy.

December 2: Compliments

Rhyming Prompt: December 2

Have I told you lately

That you are quite divine?

I’m in awe of how greatly

You sparkle and shine.

I heard all the nice things you said about me,

And it warmed my heart like the summer sun.

Thank you for being complimentary.

Let’s come up with some praise to give someone!

Download the first four prompts here as a PDF, or here as a Microsoft Word document (you may have already printed these yesterday—I’m just re-posting them here for convenience).

An image of the rhyming prompt for December 2nd printed on cream cardstock with a green border. It has a red wax seal with a frog impression highlighted in gold, and is nestled in a lit Christmas tree.

Other Materials:

None. For this, I’ll simply be passing compliments back and forth with my children all day. You can easily make this a much craftier activity if you would like to; this Complimitten activity from the Social Emotional Workshop is adorable.

Suggested Pose:

My poses for this project are never going to be elaborate because the last thing I need is extra cleanup. I want my kids to get right into the bathroom when they wake up for tooth brushing, so I’m going to hide him holding the toothpaste (but absolutely not squirting it everywhere). Besides, who doesn’t need a good compliment when they first look in the mirror?

Frantz the Frog sits on an extremely ‘90s gray and white speckled laminate countertop. He has one arm around a tube of bubblegum toothpaste and the other is holding the second day’s prompt.

Activity:

Today’s goal is to convey the importance of compliments, strategies for crafting an effective compliment, and, importantly, how to take a compliment well. In order to gamify this, I’ll be playfully passing compliments back and forth with my kids all day, with the goal of sharing our favorites from the day around the dinner table.

Rationale:

Compliments themselves are pro-social behavior and are not necessarily indicative of empathy; they could easily be motivated by the possibility of rewards (like a compliment in return). However, giving and receiving compliments lets kids practice three crucial components of empathy: positive relationship building, recognizing interpersonal similarities, and perspective-taking.

We know that people like those who compliment them, as Dale Carnegie intuited and later studies have proven (Gordon, 1996). Nevertheless, many people are hesitant to give compliments generously. A recent study on the power of compliments suggests that people vastly underestimate how positively compliments, even from strangers, will be received, and that this misperception of the value of compliments discourages people from giving them (Boothby & Bohns, 2020). Importantly, the same study also suggests that people are less likely to offer compliments because they doubt their ability to do so competently, which, let’s face it, is a reasonable fear. As anyone who has ever been made uncomfortable by a compliment knows, they aren’t all created equal, and when they go wrong, it can be disastrous. Recent studies note that Americans generally loathe compliments that reinforce positive group stereotypes (i.e. that Asians are good at math, that women are nurturing, etc.) (Siy & Cheryan, 2013), and compliments on physical appearance are fraught. Some studies have shown that American English speakers offer compliments more often than speakers of any other language, but that these compliments are generally formulaic and are often perceived as disingenuous (Luu, 2018). When we lack confidence in our ability to craft and deliver effective compliments, we sacrifice a social tool that makes both the compliment giver and receiver happier (Boothby & Bohns, 2020)—and which can foster important relationships.

In order to better utilize compliments, we need to participate in perspective-taking. The best compliments are specific, authentic, and require us to attempt to inhabit the recipient’s point-of-view. If we want to help our kids become confident compliment givers, we need to show them how to:

1. Identify something they genuinely like about someone

2. Consider why they like that thing

3. Tell the other person, without exaggerating

Research suggests that both children and adults are more likely to empathize with people who seem familiar and similar to themselves (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1984; Smith, 1988). While we’ll be working on recognizing similarities across differences in the coming days, the social value of a compliment makes evident a near-universal desire to feel both recognized and appreciated, and that realization alone is a valuable step in the development of empathy.

Book Recommendation:

Next to You, by Lori Haskins Houran and Sydney Hanson. This book depicts a series of cloyingly sweet pictures of baby animals and tells the reader, over and over, that those animals have nothing on them. I don’t like that this book is comparative or that it is mostly looks-based, but I love how cute and playful it is. Most importantly, I love that my kids LOVE it. Every time we read it, they are swooning by the end. We’ll be reading this today because it helps them understand how wonderful it can feel to get a compliment.

An image of the cover of the book Next to You. An adorable collection of baby animals—a fawn, bunny, piglet, puppy, kitten, duckling, and several chicks—are happily piled together in front of a white background.

References

Boothby, E. J. & Bohns, V. K. (2020). Why a simple act of kindness is not as simple as it seems: Underestimating the positive impact of our compliments on others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220949003

Gordon, R. A. (1996). Impact of ingratiation on judgments and evaluations: A meta analytical investigation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 54–70, https://doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.54

Luu, C. (2018, July 11). The uncertain art of the American compliment. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/the-uncertain-art-of-the-american-compliment/

Siy, J. O. & Cheryan, S. (2013). When compliments fail to flatter: Individualism and Responses to positive stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(1), 87-102, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030183  

Smith, P.K. (1988). The cognitive demands of children's social interactions with peers. In R.W. Byrne & A. Whiten (Eds.), Social experience and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes, and humans. Clarendon Press.

Zahn-Waxler C., Hollenbeck B., & Radke-Yarrow, M. (1984). The origins of empathy and altruism. In M.W. Fox & L.D. Mickley (Eds), Advances in animal welfare science. Humane Society of the United States.

December 1: It Begins!

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:

1. 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.

2. The frog’s gift-giving models pro-social behavior and generosity.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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!

Complete Recommended Supply List

There is nothing that makes my life easier than having everything I need on hand. I am embarrassed to admit how many times I’ve forsaken some planned activity for my kids because I need, say hypothetically, glitter glue and craft sticks, and what am I, a craft store? Am I just supposed to have everything ever in my house? Who has the room?! But I digress. To help us all avoid weeping in the Michaels parking lot during a pandemic (or am I the only one?), I’m providing a very detailed list of everything I think we will need for this project.

You will already have many of these items, and most others are available at the grocery store. I have broken them out into sections to make it easier to think about your shopping. I’ve provided links for some products, many of which are to Amazon for your convenience. Of course, feel encouraged to look locally and from your preferred retailers.

FOOD

• Graham crackers

• Powdered sugar

• Meringue powder

• Hot chocolate

• Marshmallows (any size)

• Snacks that are free of palm oil. You can find a useful list here. We’ll likely do veggie straws, honey maid graham crackers, and fruit. Anything fresh will be palm oil free.

• Some shelf-stable foods like peanut butter, tuna, canned stews, or soups, OR money to donate to a local food bank, OR something to make and bring to a friend/neighbor/family member of your choosing.

• You might want some small, festive candy style treats for setting up your frog, but this is optional. I’ll be picking up some Dark Chocolate Peppermint Bark Dove promises for compliment day!

CRAFT SUPPLIES

FROM THE GROCERY STORE

• Peanut butter, suet, lard, or vegetable shortening

• Vegetable oil

• Dish soap

• Blue food coloring (optional)

• Cotton balls and/or white pompoms

• On 12/11 the kids will make a gift. This can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to have them make salt dough ornaments, you’ll need flour, salt, and ribbon or twine. We’ll be making some lovely lotion bars, which require coconut oil, cocoa or shea butter, beeswax, and some sort of silicone mold (ice cube trays work fine, or something like this).

FROM ELSEWHERE

• Birdseed like this.

• Clay. We’ll be using something like this.

• Crayons in a variety of realistic skin tones. We have this set. You could probably find colors in your regular coloring supplies, but avoid traditional but reductive analogs (yellow, white, black, etc.).

TO FIND OR REPURPOSE

• Pine cones (for bird feeders)

• Magazines and catalogs for collaging

THINGS YOU PROBABLY HAVE ALREADY

• String or twine (8-10 inches)

• Glue

• Craft paper (white/construction)

• Crayons/markers/pens/watercolors—whatever you have and prefer—for creative expression

• Scissors

• A tray/bowl/tub that can get messy

• At least one age-appropriate book with protagonists who are not white, heteronormative, cisgender, able-bodied, etc. Race/sexuality/gender identity or expression/disability does not need to be the theme of the story. You likely already have some of these in your child’s home library so it need not be a new purchase, but I’ll also post lots of recommendations throughout the month.

• I’ll be making the daily prompts printable, so you might want to stock up on printer paper and ink. I’ll likely get some card stock to print on. If you don’t have a printer, don’t worry—I’ll keep the prompts short. You might want some fun pens/paper to write out the daily prompts if you won’t be using the tech!

GIFTS/EDUCATIONAL SUPPLIES

• Lights of Winter: Winter Celebrations Around the World, by Heather Conrad and DeForest Walker. Alternatively, you could just have a conversation with your kids about what winter celebrations look like for other families around the world.

• I’ll be purchasing this Toob of Penguins for a fun “clean your habitat” activity, but you might use any wintery washable figures you have on hand. They will get greasy.

• Respect the Earth conversation cards. I love Eeboo as a company, and both of my kids adore their card decks. These cards focus on individual responsibility rather than structural change, but they are still a great way to get kids excited about having environmental conversations. Mary DeMocker’s The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution would be a great alternative, but I’ll also post a couple of discussion suggestions in advance if you don’t want to buy either.

• Something to thank your postal worker or delivery people. This could be a card, a gift bag, a gift card, or even just a well-timed wave.

• A book your kids have outgrown to leave at a Little Free Library.

Festive Frog Calendar!

Are you ready to feel like everything is taken care of, and you can finally relax? I present to you the Festive Frog Calendar, 2020!

This image popped up on a search for “relaxed.” It’s a woman with long blonde hair sitting crosslegged and contemplating desert dunes. I guess it’s about as relaxed as it gets in 2020: isolated, under-resourced, and contemplating your own tenuous mortality.

Here, you’ll find an outline of all of the fun, festive activities coming up next month. I’ll be posting each day’s prompt in more detail as we get closer to December, but it’s always helpful to see an outline at a glance.

I’ve color-coded the month’s major holidays so you can see how these activities might fit into your life. While the activities are meant to build on each other, you should still feel encouraged to reschedule/skip/adapt things in whatever way works best for you and yours. This is meant to be fun and flexible.

You can download a printable version of the calendar here.

I’ll be posting a detailed suggested supply list soon, and until then, ar-ribbit-derci!

FAQ

Do you have questions about the frog? Don’t we all! Here are some answers to common questions.

If you’re just looking for a brief synopsis of the frog, check out the first post here!

Why did you develop the Festive Frog?

I want to do something extra special for my kids this holiday season because everything has been so hard and confusing this year. I was thinking about the Elf on the Shelf, but I just can’t get over the “someone is always watching you” panopticon element of it. Over the last few months (Years? Decades? Centuries?) I’ve also felt like American selfishness has been on full display, and it breaks my heart daily. I wanted to do something that would emphasize that this is a season for generosity, but also that generosity and empathy should be a routine part of our lives. I’ve decided that for the month of December the “Festive Frog” will be joining our house, popping up every morning in a new hiding place, with an empathy building gift, exercise, or activity for my children.

OK, maybe I’ll join in. What’s your plan? How much work will this be for me?

I’m planning to post all of my daily plans here. I’ll post them a few days in advance so you have time to plan things out and making any adaptations you want to. Each post will include:

a)     A fun rhyming prompt for the froggy to write out for the kids, introducing that day’s fun. I will also make these printable.

b)    A supply list, but my goal is to keep supplies extremely minimal.

c)     Links to supplementary resources and activities, if applicable.

d)    A rationale, explaining the scaffolding and research that led to this prompt or activity. I’ll explain what theoretical foundation undergirds each exercise, and why experts think this might help foster empathy in children.

I’ll also post a full suggested supply list with links in the coming days. I’ll probably wind up making the frog his own Instagram, too, so I can share his antics. Should we do a hashtag? #FestiveFrog2020!

Why a frog?

Honestly, I found a frog that I fell in love with. I needed a figure that was cute and poseable and vaguely cozy. But I also think the frog is nice because I wanted this project to be detached from Christmas and open to anyone, of any religion or without any religion. This frog’s only religion is long rambles by the river, bespoke clothing, kindness, and a comforting mug of herbal tea around 4 p.m. You are welcome to choose any figure you want for this, but I am planning to use the word “frog” in some of the rhyming prompts.

What’s the timeline?

The whole month of December. I want this to be disentangled from any one specific holiday, so ending it on Christmas doesn’t make much sense. I also think it leads into the new year nicely, and I’ll have my kids plan some goals for the year based on the things they are most invested in from this project.

Will the frog be political?

Yes, but in a way that shouldn’t be political. The frog is explicitly antiracist and pro-environment, and some of the activities over the course of the month will be about those things. The frog is confident that it can introduce these concepts in a way that is appropriate and encouraging for children of all ages. The frog firmly believes that climate justice is social justice, and social justice is racial justice, and that we need to radically re-envision a more egalitarian society if we want life to improve for all living things. Also, the frog is antifa. He’s not scary, he just hates fascism, because it is antithetical to the spirit of giving.

Just who do you think you are?

My undergraduate degree is in education, and I’ve used that degree in a wide variety of ways. I taught literature and writing in high schools and middle schools for several years before returning to school to earn my Master’s Degree in English. During that time I worked as an event host at a large independent book store, organizing educational events with authors including Mo Willems and Jon Scieszka, and I also taught creative writing in a federal prison to help inmates share their stories. I earned my PhD in English with a focus on decolonization, world literatures, and environmental rhetoric. I’ve been teaching at the University of Oregon since 2012, and while I teach a wide variety of classes, they are all filtered through the lens of social and environmental justice.

Are you hoping to profit from this?

No, I’m not. I want to do something very festive for my kids this year, and I love the exuberance of the Elf on the Shelf, but I just can’t get past the thought that I want my kids to be kind, empathetic humans not because someone is watching them, but because that is simply who they see themselves to be. I’m doing all this preparation anyway, and I’m sharing it because I think the world needs more empathetic people and parents need as much help as we can get these days. I love well-designed and complete curricula and activities, and I just thought some of you might, too. I also worry that my kids will get to school and find out that other families do the elf and feel left out, and I would love it if a fleet of families did the Festive Frog instead!

What ages will this be appropriate for?

My kids are 4 and 2, so it will be aimed at preschoolers. That said, it is my intention to make these exercises easily adaptable, so don’t be discouraged if your kids are older.

Thanks for reading. And, please, if you feel like it, join us! I’d love the company.

What is the Festive Frog?

The Festive Frog is an empathy-building exercise for kids. Every day over the month of December I’ll post a rhyming note (from the frog) with an activity, gift suggestion, or exercise designed to foster generosity and empathy in your kids, but in a fun and joyful way. I’ll also post all the supplies you need, and give you a few days advance warning so you have time to have everything at the ready. The frog is not religious and is not linked to any specific holiday, but it is explicitly anti-racist and pro-environment. If you’d like to join in, pick out a frog and check here for regular updates.

My aim is to give you 31 fun, pre-planned, empathy-building ideas for children and a break from planning every single thing yourself.

An image of a leggy plush frog in a neutral green wearing a vest and scarf. This frog is from Jellycat, and is the frog I’ll be using for this month. He loves riverside rambles, cups of herbal tea at about 4 p.m., and of course empathy.

If you are looking for some possible frogs, I love this Jellycat option and this dapper gent. Of course, please shop local if you’re able to, and choose the frog that appeals to you the most!