Chrysanthemum Teaches us a Lesson

As our Colourful Characters Literature unit begins drawing to a close, we explored the famous story, Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes which of course contains a very important moral. 

The Grade Ones came to learn, through the messages implicit within the story, that we should "treat others the way we want to be treated." Not only is this a fundamentally Jewish concept (וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ) but it reminds us all to take stock and do our best to operate from a place of kindness, compassion and respect. During our reading of Chrysanthemum, I passed around a large paper heart. Each time a character in the book made fun of Chrysanthemum and teased her about her name, one of the Grade Ones was asked to crumple the heart and each time a character in the book demonstrated kindness or compassion, the Grade Ones were asked to smooth out the heart. By the end of the story, the heart, although not fully crumpled and in better shape than it was during the story, contained wrinkles that could not be entirely removed. Similarly, mean words cannot be taken back and often leave a scar on one's heart. The students understood the connection that our own hearts feel wrinkled and crumpled sometimes when we don't like what someone says. Words do hurt. We then tried to put bandaids on the heart as a way to show that we can own our mistakes and apologize.  The heart will probably still be wrinkled, but it is healing. Following this meaningful activity, each student created two friends on which they wrote two responses. On one friend they wrote what Chrystanthemum taught them and on the other friend they wrote an intention to do good for their friends.