This is the fourth post in my series "Virtues in Focus."
Click here to read the rest.
What does being gentle mean? “We Choose Virtues” sums it up well for us: being gentle means speaking quietly and touching softly. We should be gentle with our mouth and our hands.
While I find my children’s squeals, occasional screams, and
regular roughhousing important ingredients of a happy childhood, it is still
best to guide them and make them understand about being gentle towards each
other and other people. Understanding the need to be gentle is part of
their social and emotional development.
In our week focused on gentleness, we did some activities
and read a few books. I hope the following can help you too on your path to
acquiring this virtue.
Music and Movement Games
Music was an obvious choice for us to demonstrate soft and
loud. Kindermusik classes promote sound discrimination right from Village (the
one for newborn to one and a half year olds) and encourage families to continue the learning at home with the home materials.
- We practiced playing softly and LOUDLY with our drums and egg shakers
- We took turns calling out the way to play with our instruments
- We played with our mini-cymbals while marching up and down. Little’s T current favorite phrase, which comes from a Cherub Wings video, provides a wonderful example for soft and loud sound: “Praise the Lord with booming cymbals: BOOOOOM!” Ouch in BOOOOOM!
- We moved to music, depending on what it was “telling” us to do. Our favorite is this song from Little Sir’s Milk and Cookies CD. We sway in the slow and quiet parts, and we bounce in the bouncy parts.
Soft and Loud Voices
We practiced using our soft and loud voices by talking with:
- our regular voices,
- whispering, and then
- almost-shouting.
We talked about when to use each voice, and why. Regular
voices are for talking to each other, whispering is for when somebody is asleep
or resting, and “almost-shouting” or okay, just plain shouting, when there is
an emergency and you need to call somebody’s attention.
Touching Gently
Little T thinks her baby brother is “the cutest baby
in the whole world!” She can’t stop pinching or squeezing him. It bothers the
grown-ups, but doesn’t seem to faze Little Sir. I think he even likes it and
asks his sister, “again?”
To demonstrate touching gently - to appease myself that I’m
at least protecting my baby, ha! - we played with some of our stuffed toys and took turns
patting them. When we did this though, I forgot to bring out the classic baby
book “Pat the Bunny” by Dorothy Kunhardt. It is an interactive book that asks
children to touch and feel parts of the book.
Books
"The Little Rabbit" by Judy Dunn and Phoebe Dunn is a "Before Five in a Row" book. It's about Sarah and her pet rabbit Buttercup. 
"Be Gentle!" is one of the stories about the cub Bartholomew by Virginia Miller. It is a lively series that we enjoyed when Little T was a toddler and that we are now re-reading for Little Sir. This particular story is also about taking care of a pet.
Books about pets are generally great for talking about being gentle not only to animals but to people as well. I'm hoping to find more books that tackle gentleness, so I hope you'll let me know if you've read one!
Make magic!
2 comments:
The kids love the "Praise the Lord with booming cymbals!" part, too! They had so much fun praising booming their cymbals last night! Haha! :)
So cute! But the BOOM! can really hurt the ears!
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