Read or listen to a story together called, “Kind Ninja” by Mary Nhin. Then, put on a puppet show with your child. Make up a story about an adventure that the puppets go on together, talking about each other’s emotions and modeling how to interact positively to build relationships.

Families, check out this video for a tutorial on this learning plan.

Materials:

• At least 4 puppets (socks, oven mitts, stuffed animals, paper bags, etc.)

Start the activity by reading a story together about kindness. Recommended reading, “Kind Ninja” which can be borrowed from a local library or purchased here. Or, families can play this read aloud video for free online here. During the story, talk about the different ways that Kind Ninja shows kindness to others. Especially when Kind Ninja interacts with other children, ask your child what Kind Ninja did to show kindness to the other ninjas. You can also ask your child how they think the other people in the story felt after Kind Ninja helped them. To help your child develop skills related to retelling stories, you can ask questions while reading the story such as:

Wait, who was that person?

What’s happening on this page?

What do you think Kind Ninja will do next?

After the story, talk to your child about how you are going to put on a puppet show together! Ask your child to pick two of the puppets to go on an adventure together. Demonstrate how to make the puppet talk, and encourage your child to be the voice for one puppet. Ask your child to choose the adventure that your puppets go on.

Some adventure examples include: going to school, the grocery store, the park, the beach, etc. I would recommend going to a place that is familiar to your child so that they can easily talk through a story. 

You will want to bring up a conflict between the two characters to help your child learn how to use basic problem-solving skills to resolve conflicts with other children. If your child needs help with this, you can introduce one of your extra puppets to have them be the ones that get in a conflict with your puppet. This way, you can model good prosocial behaviors, such as identifying emotions, considering the other person’s feelings, and coming up with a compromise.

Examples of conflicts could be: arguing over whose turn it is to push the shopping cart, one puppet pushed the over running to the swings, someone splashed water in the other puppet’s face in the waves.

Additionally, one element of the puppet show should include one of the puppets that needs help from your child’s puppet. The goal is for your child to express care and concern toward others, engage in positive interactions with others, and gain a sense of belonging to the community. After your child helps the other puppet, reinforce that they helped the puppet and that helping friends is important for our community. You can emphasize that they are a helper, and you can ask them how it made them feel when they helped the puppet.

Examples of needing help could be: one puppet got hurt on the playground, one puppet didn’t have enough money to buy apples, the puppet forgot to bring a toy to the beach!

You can support students in communicating what they learned by making connections between what you read about in the story and the observations you are making in the activity. If children need additional support, grown-ups can model how to build relationships by taking on the role of two puppets in the puppet show. 

Through further practice, children can continue to express emotions in daily routines. Since the puppet show ideally takes place in a setting that is familiar to your child, when you visit that place in real life, you can talk about how the puppet show relates to what you are seeing. Perhaps the conflict that you practiced in the puppet show happens in front of you, and you can talk about how the people in real life feel. Grown-ups can ask their children things like, “How do you think that makes them feel? How does that make you feel?” You can also model identifying emotions by stating your own feelings, such as, “I feel upset that I can’t buy all the ice cream in the store” or “I feel happy when you share with me!”

Another learning extension is incorporating Kindness Certificates with your child provided by the Ninja Life Hacks website. You can print out Kindness Certificates signed by Kind Ninja to award to your child to recognize their acts of kindness. You can download the certificates here.

Learning Standards:

Goal P-SE 1. Child engages in and maintains positive relationships and interactions with adults.

Goal P-SE 2. Child engages in prosocial and cooperative behavior with adults.

Goal P-SE 3. Child engages in and maintains positive interactions and relationships with other children.

Goal P-SE 5. Child uses basic problem-solving skills to resolve conflicts with other children.

Goal P-SE 6. Child expresses a broad range of emotions and recognizes these emotions in self and others.

Goal P-SE 7. Child expresses care and concern toward others.

Goal P-SE 8. Child manages emotions with increasing independence.

Goal P-SE 9. Child recognizes self as a unique individual having own abilities, characteristics, emotions, and interests.

Goal P-SE 10. Child expresses confidence in own skills and positive feelings about self.

Goal P-SE 11. Child has sense of belonging to family, community, and other groups.

Download the full Social Emotional Learning Plan here.