KaMOShi Practical guide for 'Ant has got a problem'

-    cherry time (June)
-    a conflict between two children: this is mine!
-    a practical problem in the classroom: there is not enough space in the sitting area, it’s a mess in the bookcase, there are too many leftovers in the lunch boxes.
-    Value education: sharing is the new having, if you share, you’ll have everything nice and double, play together and share together
-    …

Man and society

• Man: Me and myself: 1.1 the pre-schoolers can recognize in themselves when they are afraid, happy, angry or sad and can express this in a simple way.
• Man: Me and the other: 1.4 in concrete situations the pre-schoolers can recognize different ways of interacting with each other and talk about it.
• Man: Me and the other: 1.5 the pre-schoolers can recognize in others feelings such as being afraid, happy, angry and sad and can empathize with these feelings.
• Man: Me and the other: 1.6 the pre-schoolers know that people can experience the same situation differently and react in a different manner to it.
• Man: Me and the Other: 1.7 the pre-schoolers can show a sensitivity to the needs of others
• People and society: 1. Man: Me and the others: in group: 1.10 The pre-schoolers can make agreements in concrete situations with the help of an adult.
• Society: Socio-economic phenomena: 2.2 in a concrete situation, the pre-school children can make a distinction between giving, receiving, exchanging, borrowing, buying and selling.

Musical education

• Musical education - Drama: 3.1 The pre-schoolers can express their own experiences, practices, thoughts, feelings and actions.
• Musical education - Drama: 3.2 The pre-schoolers can empathize with characters and things from their environment and portray them.

Languages

• Languages listening: 1.6 The pre-schoolers can demonstrate willingness to listen to each other and to empathize with a message.
• Languages speaking: 2.9 The pre-schoolers can call for the help or cooperation of others.
• Languages speaking: 2.10 The pre-schoolers can empathize with clearly recognizable roles and situations and respond to them from their own imagination / experience.

Science and technology

• Nature: General skills: 1.2 The pre-schoolers show an exploratory and experimental approach to learn more about nature.
• Technology: Technology as human activity: 2.5 The pre-schoolers can choose suitable material and tools to make a simple technical system.
• Technology: Technology as a human activity: 2.9 The pre-school children show an experimental and exploratory approach to learn more about engineering.

Mathematical Initiation

• Mathematical initiation - Numbers: 1.1 The pre-schoolers can in action and verbally compare one concrete amount of things with another amount of things. In articulating they use the appropriate quantity concepts. (as many / not as many things, many / few things, too many / too few things, things about / things too short, more / less things, most / least things).

The characters in the story

• Ant: picture 1 up to and including 9
• Snail: picture 2,8 and 9
• Cricket: picture 4,8 and 9
• Bee: picture 6, 7, 8 and 9

The character’s feelings

• Picture 1: Ant is exhausted and discouraged
• Picture 2: Snail is disappointed
• Picture 6: Bee is curious
• Picture 8: Snail, Cricket and Bee are cheering
• Picture 9: Ant is happy and relieved

Research tools

• Picture 3: Can you dig a trench to get the cherry rolling?
• Picture 5: Can you lift the cherry with a branch (leverage principle) and make it roll?

Observe in detail

• Picture 1: how many legs does Ant have? What does ant have on its head? Which other parts are there on Ant's body (chest, abdomen)?
• Picture 2: which of Snail’s characteristics can you see?
• Picture 4: which of Cricket’s characteristics can you see in this picture? How many legs does Cricket have? Does Cricket's head look like that in real life?
• Picture 6: which of Bee’s characteristics can you see?
• Picture 7: what do you see on Ant's head?
• Picture 9: what happened to the cherry? What's in it?

apply / moreover / lump / breadcrumb / loot / dangling / lend a hand / a light comes on / no thought of / trench / dig / continue the way / industrious / on my own / in return for / suit yourself / cheer in unison / join forces / share and enjoy / with some effort / ant family / ant body / ant sweat / crawl out from under the cherry / relieved / problem / huge / a giant bite / shield / chirp / drag / tasty feast / disappointed / exhausted / too much of a good thing / crushed / flip his leg / continue on one’s way

Conduct circle discussions about the ticklish animals in the story

Organize an empathy game or exercise break

Have circle discussions about wanting to have for yourself, sharing and working together

Make up different versions of the story

Participate

Conduct circle discussions about the ticklish animals in the story

• Let the children express their experiences and feelings with the characters of the story: ant(s), snail, cricket, bee(s). Do the children know any other ticklish animals / soil heroes? Other small animals may also be discussed: mosquitoes, wasps, flies, bumblebees …

Organize an empathy game or exercise break

• Give the children the opportunity to empathize with Ant, Snail, Cricket and Bee and to reconstruct the story. They can portray it or act it out with cuddly dolls.
• Let the children play freely and act out the story. This can be done with objects / cuddly toys and with a ball being a cherry. It is also possible to do this with self-made hand dolls representing the characters of the story.
• Connect the characters of the story with expression, movements and sounds. Use this idea for a break.

Have circle discussions about wanting to have for yourself, sharing and working together
In response to this story, there are several topics children can exchange their experiences and feelings on:

• want to have (much) (for themselves), "this is mine and mine alone!" ...
• want to be able / to do alone, not being that strong
• not wanting to share toys, not wanting to share food…
• working together, helping each other ...
• if you do something for someone else, do you always want something in return?
• being allowed to use something from someone else, what do you then in particular pay attention to?
• what is the difference between giving, receiving, exchanging, borrowing, buying and selling? (see development goal People and society 2.2.)

Make up different versions of the story

• Tell the children about ants: they can't live alone, they always live in groups. When ants meet, they greet each other. They do this by touching each other with their feelers. In this way they know whether they come from the same nest. Each ant family has its own scent. They can also tell different things to each other, for example that there is food somewhere, or that there is danger.
• Let the children tell a different story starting from the Ant who finds a cherry or other tasty snack (picture 1).
• Let the children look for other ideas in connection with picture 7 - Ant has an idea. See "Possible Key Question: Could the Ant have come up with other solutions to get the cherry home?" Which?'
• An extra impulse, if needed, could be: why does Ant not call his ant family to help move the cherry or to eat it together on the spot?

Participate

• The children can choose which character of the story they want to empathize with.
• Make sure that all children can make their own contribution in circle discussions.
• Give the children plenty of space to devise different versions of the story.

Discover and observe ticklish animals

Experimenting with levers and ways to move things

Carrying out dividing and working together assignments

Other ideas for processing the story

Investigate situations in the classroom group

Participate

Discover and observe ticklish animals

• Look for small animals in the playground or in the surroundings of the school.
• Get to know the “soil heroes”: springtail, centipede, millipede, woodlouse, worm, insect larva, ant, beetle, earwig, hay cart, spider, snail, mole, bee, bumblebee ... Use information cards: See https://www.vlaanderen.be/publicaties/bodemhelden-infokaarten
• Search for ants and observe how they move, how they transport things, how they work together, where they live, characteristics, species of ants… Find out what ants eat. Compare with how people live, move around, transport something, work together ...
• Discuss the differences between ants, snail, cricket and bee.
• Give children the space to express their feelings about ticklish animals.
• Discover characteristics on photos, images, video.
• Optionally, use an ant viewing box.
• In a cherry tree nearby, do you also see small animals, ants?
• With the KaMOShibai story "Soly and Bee" you can take a closer look at the lifestyle of the solitary bee, the honeybee, the wasp and the bumblebee.

Experimenting with levers and ways to move things

• Provide some lighter and heavier objects. 
• Do this outside, if you can, with branches, tree trunk, logs...
• Challenge the children to move the objects from A to B.
• Let them draw conclusions and formulate hypotheses.
• Give instructions and criteria they should take into account.
• Give them tools to move something. Let them invent and try out tools of their own.
• Provide objects to create their own rolling ball sculpture and let them try it out and adjust it.
• Demonstrate how a lever works and let children discover what they can do with it.

Carrying out dividing and working together assignments

• Give assignments to practise concepts related to proportions: few or many cherries, tomatoes, biscuits ... / small ant with large cherry, cuddly ant compared to larger ball ...
• Issue dividing assignments, e.g. divide 4 apples or pears among 20 children, share a drink e.g. a ‘cherry shake’, (letter) biscuits, chestnuts, berries, grapes… (research).
• Provide working together exercises e.g. group work crafting / painting, Sherborne exercises and other movement assignments, transferring someone from one side to the other ...
• Design a "goose board game" with assignments related to dividing / working together / being allowed to use someone else's xxx.

Other ideas for processing the story

• Have a conversation and let them form their opinion about the ant’s behaviour. Don't rush to the "message" of the story. Provide enough counterweight. Affirm the importance of standing up for yourself, taking care of yourself, wanting something for yourself ... versus not wanting to share ...
• Imitating the sounds made by crickets (chirping), bees (buzzing), snails (nibbling leaves,) ants (chattering) ...
• Paint the characters and situations of the story.
• Mould the characters of the story in clay (snail's house) ...
• Place the names of the characters with the correct picture (stamping), rewrite them, hang them with magnetic letters ...
• Acting out the story in a sandbox (digging trenches) ...
• Observing cherries: where do they grow? Blossom, colours (from yellow to black red), taste juice (sweet, sour), weight, pit (pitting, how do you do that? a pitbag), stalk, skin or peel, edible or non-edible

Investigate situations in the classroom group

• During e.g. a week, observe and record when children work together, share things or want something just for themselves. Discuss this with them and find solutions or make agreements.
• Observe when and how conflicts arise among the children. See if they can sort it out themselves and how they do this.
• Observe practical 'problems' in the classroom: a door that squeaks, a door (e.g. from a cupboard) that hangs loose, not enough space in the sitting area, something that is in the wrong place and should better be moved, a mess in the bookcase, a leaking tap, too much waste or paper waste, too many leftovers in the lunch boxes, toys that everyone wants to play with ... Discuss your observations with the children: how can we solve this (together), what should we do? Who can help? Let children make proposals for action.

Participate

• Let the children decide together which ticklish animal / soil hero they want to learn more about.
• Let the children decide what they want to move and how they want to do it.
• The children can choose how they will process the story.

Get started with the conclusions from your observations

Organize a show moment and / or ‘tasty feast'

Exchange, share and give

Participation by the children and by others

Get started with the conclusions from your observations

How can we apply sharing / working together in our classroom?

• Describe concrete situations in the classroom and let the children make suggestions. Select with them 2 or 3 alternatives, let them choose and carry out. Confirm their choice. Monitor and adjust where necessary.
• Choose a practical problem yourself or together with the children that you will tackle together. Let them experience how you can tackle a problem and solve it. Refer to how Ant approaches his problem in the story.
• Teach children to settle conflicts themselves by means of a cuddly Ant. Teach them that making it up is more than saying sorry and shaking hands. Teach children that you can settle a conflict in several ways. Discuss several options with them. Let them act this out and take pictures of it. Display those photos on a so-called "recovery wall". Teach them to make choices with the pictures on the recovery wall.

Organize a show moment and / or ‘tasty feast'

• Let the children tell and act out the story for another classroom group, for (grand)parents.
• Let them express what Ant has learned and what they will apply in the classroom. Use the pictures of the story as eye-catchers.
• Organize a healthy reception. Have everyone take something from home and share it with the classmates. You can organize a "potluck". If this happens at the end of the school year, cherries can be eaten and tasted.

Exchange, share and give

• Organize an exchange between 2 classroom groups or with the whole school.
• It can take half a day, a whole day or even several days.
• It can be done once or on an agreed moment during several weeks.
• Use pictures of Ant and picture 9 - Tasty feast as eye-catcher
• Work together with the parents. Have the children take items that can be exchanged, shared or given away: clothes, games, objects, including fruits, nuts, grapes, cookies, etc.
• Collaborate with another classroom group. This can also be an elementary school classroom group. Borrow (teaching) materials, help each other. Share surpluses, e.g. the excess of birthday cakes, fruit, drinks …

Participation by the children and by others

• Let the children make suggestions themselves for working together, settling conflicts, and tackling practical problems in the classroom.
• Provide the class with a large amount of seasonal fruit and let the children decide for themselves what they want to do with it:
  • Spring (March-April-May): apples, rhubarb, strawberry.
  • Summer (June): cherries, berries, raspberries.
  • Autumn (September-October-November): apples, berries, blackberries, grapes, raspberries, pears, plums, figs.
  • Winter (December-January-February): apples, pears.
• Let the children decide for themselves what they want to show and  do at the show moment
• Engage the children in proposals to exchange, share and give. Discuss together what is feasible.