Enemy Pie

So in our classroom we started our mini-unit on conflict resolution. I kicked off our unit by reading one of my favorite books Enemy Pie by Derek Munson. We discussed how sometimes things happen that we aren't happy about and sometimes we have a problem with someone at school. In our classroom most of our class has a big problem with conflict resolution. They believe that every issue involves needing to tell Ms. Manetta and me. We've been trying to teach them better ways to solve problems when they are not something Ms. Manetta or myself need to be talked to about. We thought that a mini-unit on the topic was needed.

 After reading the book we made an enemy pie and tricked the students into thinking we were going to serve it to them during snack. Our pie, was a pie crust with mud, leaves, moss, ivy and other mystery objects from outside. They were absolutely convinced that their must be dog poop inside it too since it would be the nastiest thing to give an enemy. (Of course there wasn't any inside though)

We then discussed various scenarios we have seen in our classroom and asked the students to come up with ways to solve the problem. (i.e. someone won't stop following you at recess, someone took the book they were reading) We also talked about being nice to all of our classmates.

After washing their hands, Ms. Manetta asked them for volunteers to eat our pie. We had one brave soul who raised her hand. We then pulled out a pumpkin pie from behind Ms. Manetta and explained to the students that we had a real pie to be our anti-enemy pie. They were quite excited to eat pie for snack.We had a few groans of disappointment that they wouldn't be eating our pie we made.

Today we also started our animal research projects. The students were given their bookmarks to write their notes on about their animal. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it seemed for my first graders. We writing time was over they moaned, when do we get to finish. I told them later in the week we would.