We are now half way through our All about Me topic and the boys and I are equally enjoying this topic and the extension it has within other subjects such as science.
The investigation to what are brain, heart, eyes and other aspects that make up our body map has created some interesting topics of conversation.
One aspect I have been keen to cover with the boys is self-esteem.
I will openly admit that I have low self-esteem and actually it is one of the major triggers to my mental health. I see myself in a negative light and take a lot on as personal blame; I find it extremely difficult to remind myself that I am amazing
It has always been a worry that anything I go through will face a level of transference to the boys and subsequently I would hate for them to grow up to have similar issues.
I decided then to focus one of our lessons on self-esteem to allow the boys to see what their strengths are.
A Lion is a creature that is seen as powerful and strong with many traits that we would all love to have; it is a great example for the boys to visualise.
We started this craft by joining 6 sheets of A3 paper together and with that an outline of a lions head.
We the cut up a range of yellow, orange, red, brown and black paper and card.
Using these pieces we started to build the face up around the mouth.
Carrying on with the face but changing some of the colours to provide some contrast we moved up and started the lions nose, cheeks and eyes.
We then started to use the black card to create structure within the different areas.
We found it really useful to step back and look at the lion at each stage to find out what part we should cover next. The Boys decided that they do the "inner mane" and again changed the colours that they were using; concentrating here in more browns and no yellow.
So far this took us 2 hours to make and with that we thought that it was best to leave it for another day. The following day, however, the boys woke up super excited to continue what we were doing and to finish the lion.
The final part we had to do was the "outer mane" and to use a lot more red.
Both of the boys pushed really hard to complete it.
Throughout the activity we spoke in depth about the qualities that a lion has that we would like to have too.
The boys really liked that a lion was strong, brave, fierce, kind, gentle, a king and clever; all things that they wanted to be.
We finally made little tabs to attach to our poster. Each label said "William is" or "James is" and we took turns to write the things we like about each other. The boys really enjoyed doing this and it is a good visual reminder of our positive qualities. I hope with crafts and subjects like this that they will both grow up with a positive self image.
So what do you think of our lion?
And, importantly, what makes you a lion?
4 comments:
That looks fantastic! Well done your boys. They are so creative.
What a great activity to get chatting about self-esteem.
Thanks Kim! They really loved doing it! I think it's important that they try to learn this whilst being young.
I just love this post. You are all so talented creating this and lessons on self esteem are so important. I feel the same as you in terms of lacking self-esteem and I don't want to pass this feeling onto my children.
Nat.
Thanks Nat. I have to admit that everytime I look at it on the wall I'm impressed!! It is a worry for us to think what the kids my get but I think it's equally or more important to show them ways to cope and feel differently to us.
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