I love Aesop's The Donkey and the Wolf. We downloaded it from Memetales and auto-played it on our iPad for my 3-year-old son. He enjoyed the story but, at 3 years old, he had a lot of questions about the relationship, why they would want to hurt one another and so on.
In any event, we read it together and the moral, at least to me, seemed more than ‘brawn or brains?' Another perspective tells us: ‘Stick to what you know and Be true to yourself”, and is one that we can never start teaching too early in life.
My son and I had a conversation about the moral of the story that I thought you all would appreciate. It was very sweet actually that went something like this:
“What do you mean, mama? Why did the donkey want to hurt him?”
“Well, sweetie, a wolf wants to hurt donkeys because a wolf needs food to survive.”
“Is the wolf mean?”
“No, not really. He is willing to be mean in order to get what he needs to live. The donkey knew that much about the wolf. Plus, the wolf should have known the donkey was not his friend and would not ask for his help.”
“What do you mean, mama?”
“Well, this story has a moral, which means that it teaches us about what is right and wrong through the characters of the story. The moral of this story is to ‘stick to what you know and to be true to yourself'. So the donkey and the wolf knew they weren't friends and that the wolf wanted to eat the donkey. They acted as though they didn't know themselves or about one another and it backfired on them.”
“Huh, what do you mean, mama?” {I don't blame him for asking this question. I was struggling.}
“Well, sticking to what you know means, like, for you, for example, you know trains and dinosaurs. If you pretended not to like trains or not to like dinosaurs and instead pretended to like something else like dogs or knights, the result wouldn't be good. You wouldn't know much about dogs of knights and by not being true to yourself, you might be unhappy and not make the best decisions.”
“Huh, okay, let's go play trains.”
There you have it. The moral of an Aesop fable explained to a 3-year-old. “A” for effort.
To try to get the idea better explained to him, I took the concept down a notch. I prepared this “Be True to Yourself” Collage activity to bring these points to a 3-year-old's point of view.
The goal of the “Be True to Yourself” Collage is to remind my son of who he is and what he knows & loves in life.
Materials:
- Poster board
- Images from magazines, the computer or extra photos
- Scissors
- Glue or Glue Stick (or even tape)
- Markers and/or crayons for extra fun decorating if you desire
Approach:
- Pull out the poster board and miscellaneous photos. I prepped many images ahead of time by copying, printing and cutting images from Google. My son is working on his cutting skills. If your child wants to cut his own images, go for it! My son isn't quite there yet. I did include a few of his special magazines so that we could peruse the images together and talk about his loves.
- Grab your glue
- I wrote “Things I Know and Love” at the top of the poster board
- We started creating the collage together, talking about the story and what my son loves and knows in his life. As we glued the images onto the poster board we talked about the things he loves and how even when people don't like those things, that's okay. He should stay true to who he is.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post today. I hope that we inspired you to tackle some of the bigger topics early in life. I am a huge believer that our little spirits will truly benefit from these early conversations!
XO, Marnie
Disclaimer: I partnered with Memetales and PBSkids’ to promote and execute this program via publishing activities and ideas around books within the chosen theme. I would have been an active participant outside this partnership arrangement of which my family receives books and my blog receives exposure. Maya and her team at Memetales are phenomenal. I am honored to be a part of their efforts.