The Balloon Dilemma.
On Wednesday, the Sea Unicorn Class got very excited because Ms. Anissa came to our classroom with a big bundle of balloons. Every student was excited at the prospect of bringing home their very own balloon. There was a problem though. Ms. Anissa said she wasn’t sure if there were enough balloons for every child. We counted the balloons and there were only 12 balloons. Melissa quickly said, “Nope, we have 20 in our class, 12 isn’t enough.”
We accepted the balloons anyways and decided we would talk as a class to figure out what to do. We brought the balloons to circle and asked if anybody had any ideas on how we could solve the problem of not having enough balloons for every child. First, Willem came up with the idea of cutting the balloons in two. Many quickly shouted, “No! It will pop!”
Then, Iris came up with the idea of sharing the balloons. She explained, “We could share them. One balloon for two friends.” She quickly discovered a problem with her idea and said, “but who would take them home?” Selma said “we could take turns bringing them home.” Caleb replied, “if you take turns the other person might want to go first and the other one might want to go first and there might be a fight.” Mr. Matt asked the class, “Do you think you might fight about who could take the balloon home first?” There was a mixture of “No!” and “Yes!” in response to this question.
The next idea came from Nicholas who said “we can just keep them here in school and share them in the morning.” This was wonderful problem solving and the children all agreed to this solution. However, Mr. Matt was not so excited with this solution. I stated, “I am worried that if we have 12 balloons in our class it may distract us from all of the other areas setup in our class. Also, the balloons can’t stay in our classroom forever so we would still need to figure out who got to take them home afterwards.”
Melissa remarked, “We could do eenie, meenie, minie, moe! That will help us decide who can bring it home if we all agree not to fight.” The majority of the children agreed with this idea. However, there were still a few students who didn’t like this idea. “It won’t be fair,” claimed Caleb. “I don’t like that idea” said Nicholas.
Sam then said, “I have balloons at home so I don’t really need to have a balloon.” A few other kids also said they didn’t need a balloon either. At this point, we counted the children in our class that still wanted a balloon. There were still 16 kids who wanted a balloon and we still only had 12 balloons. Sam then said, “what if I bring in my two balloons from home?” We figured out as a class that we would than have 14 balloons which unfortunately was still not enough for the 16 students who still wanted a balloon.
Ms. Karen then rose her hand with another idea. “Sea Unicorns there are a lot of kids that live near me that don’t have a lot of things. They can’t really afford to go to school and they don’t have toys. I think these balloons would make them very happy. Maybe we could give them to them?” Many of the kids were really excited about this idea. There were a few kids who said, “No! I don’t like that plan.” However, the majority of the kids were very happy about this plan and we decided that this would be a fair solution to our problem and that it would feel good to give the balloons to kids who don’t have as much as us. Some children remained disappointed and there were even a few tears. The teachers remarked on how it can be very dissapointing to not get something that you thought you were going to have and that can make us sad.
Ms. Karen brought in pictures and a video message from the children the very next day. She remarked at how happy the balloons had made the children and the children thanked the Sea Unicorn Class in their video.
After the children saw the pictures, they were even more happy about giving the balloons away. While looking at the photos one student remarked, ”Their houses are not nice.” Another added, “They are poor.” The spirit of giving the balloons transferred over in to more ideas of things the children wanted to give them.
“We should go to the bank and get money to give to them. You put a card in a machine and money will come out and we can bring it to them.” -Caleb
“We should give them food.” -Sam
“We could bring toys from my home. Like I have some toys at home that I don’t use and I could give it to them. I want to make them toys” -Jordano
“We can make them drawings.” -Iris
At the end of the day today we made our new friends drawings and we also decided to give them some papers and markers in case they wanted to make some drawings. We will see if they continue to brainstorm ideas next week.
It is amazing to see how the problem of having too few balloons turned into such a rich learning experience for the Preschoolers. It was a learning experience that included math, problem solving, moral issues, equality, learning about emotions, dealing with dissapointment, and service learning. Though it seems like a small gesture to give 12 balloons to other children that “don’t have much” it was indeed a huge sacrifice for some of our Preschoolers. A sacrifice that many of them feel proud about.
Mr. Matt Pelkey