Over the next few weeks we will be reading lots of books and having lots of conversations around kindness and helping others and I will be trying to help my children understand why there are so many refugees around the world.
The older children have just finished reading The Silver Sword about the journey of a Polish refugee family during the Second World War. With the younger two I am starting with The Suitcase by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros.
A weary stranger arrives one day with only a suitcase, everyone is full of questions. The stranger is asked what is in his suitcase and he tells the people a teacup, a table, a wooden chair and a little kitchen in a wooden cabin. His home. The others do not believe him and as he sleeps they break into the suitcase to find a broken tea cup and a photograph of the stranger’s home. The others have to decide what to do. They work together while the stranger sleeps to show a fine example of feeling sorry for what they did, showing kindness to a stranger and helping them to feel better.
Sometimes all we can do is be kind. We can reach out and try to help others. Try to be welcoming to new people. Try to be friendly and always be kind.
This is a lovely story for little people to get them thinking about kindness and empathy and talking about how we treat people in need, people different from us, people new to us. It sparks lots of talk about how others might feel, how we know what is right and what is wrong, how our actions might make others feel. A brilliant book to get our little ones talking and thinking about kindness.
Nosy Crow have produced some brilliant teaching resources to use with this brilliant book
Have a swipe through the pictures below to see how we used them during Refugee Week 2020
We will be using them again in the coming weeks