Craft Lesson 10: Teaching Responsibility

Discussion:

Teaching children responsibility is a difficult process. Sometimes, picture books can be a helpful aid. For instance, in Laura Numeroff's If You Give a ____ book series, children are typecast in semi-parental roles tending to unannounced and difficult animal guests. In each book, the animal guests will make outrageous demands of their children hosts. The request may be as simple as syrup for their pancake to throwing a party for all their animal friends. In the book, If You Give a Pig a Pancake the animal guest starts off with asking for syrup, which leads to a request to take a bath to clean off the syrup, which leads to a demand for a rubber ducky, and so on! In the classroom, teachers could explain to the children that parenting is a difficult job. In many cases, there are judgment calls that need to be made. The teachers can then use these series books to tactfully get the message across to the children.

How to Teach It:

The teacher asks the children if they ever pretend to be parents? How do they delegate the responsibilities? When do they say "no" to their play children? The teacher can then introduce the book, If You Give A Pig A Pancake to the students. She will ask the children to watch and listen to the demands of the pig guest. She will then read the book. After the read aloud, the teacher will ask the children about the pig's requests to the child host. The teacher can write each of the demands on the board as the children recount them. They can then review all the requests together. Are they reasonable? Are they unreasonable? What would they do if they were the host for this pig guest? The teacher can then have the children write their own responses to the pig's requests on a piece of paper. What would they do if they were the child in the book? Would they have honored all the pig's demands or would they have said "no" at some point? The idea is to get the students to think about their social responsibilities. When is a request unfair or too much?

Resource Materials: The picture book, If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff.