Friendship Unit - How To Lose All Your Friends

{If you're looking to do a unit about friendship and community, here are a few kinder-tested activities that we know will be a hit in the classroom!}

Nancy Carlson's How To Lose All Your Friends makes a great addition to your community/friendship lesson plans. With it's humorous drawings and witty prose, your kiddos are sure to relate to the story, recognizing the marks of bratty behavior and reviewing how not to be a friend!

We think it would be a great idea to add a visual demonstration when presenting the story. Most of your kiddos have been taught that negative attitudes and behavior can cause problems with friends, parents, teachers, etc., but what they may not understand is that {especially in a classroom setting} their behavior doesn't just affect themselves, but can affect everyone around them... 

Supplies You'll Need

• Clear glass
• Water
• Food coloring or liquid watercolor paints

Before beginning the story, have your students observe the water in the clear glass. It's clean, pure, and would be very refreshing to drink. Invite them to think of the glass of water as the classroom environment. Show them the food coloring, equivalent to all the bratty traits presented in Carlson's book - tattling, taking all the good toys, not sharing, whining, cheating, lying, name calling, etc. Ask them what they think will happen when you add a drop of food coloring to the glass of water.

Just as the color spreads, diffusing into the water, a bad attitude and mean behavior can change the entire feel of the learning environment. When we did this demonstration, we did it as we read the story and added a drop of food coloring with each new bratty trait presented. At the end of the story, the main character was friendless and the water was a muddy brown. The students didn't even want to think about taking a sip. It was a great way to show students how negative behavior can ruin friendships and can have an impact on the way a classroom functions!