The Layers of Sharing
We began a new round of Small Group Work this week and decided to continue having one of the groups engage in cooking. This week’s group worked together to make strawberry pikelets (mini pancakes). As always, this experience framed a context for the children to come together as a group and consider each other through the need to take turns throughout the process. Further to this is the notion of sharing their cooking with their peers and teachers. In their time together as a class, the E1 children have forged close relationships with each other and very much see themselves as a group. They are conscious of how their choices and actions affect others and have discovered why and how to share. Therefore they not only accept but take pleasure in a context such as cooking, to be able to share with their E1 peers and teachers.
We decided to add a new layer to the concept of sharing by suggesting that the children who made the pikelets also offer some to the E2 children. The E1 children are aware of the E2s and have had some experience with forging relationships with them on occasions when both classes are having Outdoor Exploration at the same time. However they certainly do not have the same connection with the E2 children as they do with their E1 friends so naturally when it was suggested that they share the children questioned, “Why?” or even detested, “No, I don’t like that, only E1!” The teacher explained that like the E1 children, the E2 children might also like to eat a pikelet so the children agreed that they could share. The experience of presenting the pikelets to the E2 children helped the E1 children build further meaning around sharing as they were greeted with many forms of gratitude from the E2 children, provoking the following reflection from one E1 child,
“We give the pikelets to the E2 and E2 is so, so happy!”
