A Look at Loyalty

This activity can be used as a stand-alone activity, but I am presenting it as one in a series of activities related to our reading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  For more information and resources for the entire LWW unit, click here.

The instructions for each step in the activity are available on the images here.  Simply click on each image and it will open in its own window.  You can then clearly see what is written there and print.

I ask only that you please use these pages for educational uses with your child/children in your home or classroom and for no other reason.

 Aesop's The Goatherd and the Wild Goats can be found online here.  The BBC has done an Audio version that gives the story more context and shares the story with more elaborate description building pictures in a listener's head about each character and the setting.  It tells the story from the perspective of the wild goats instead of in third person also making the story a little more personal (which is a nice touch).  Additionally, there is this animated version on YouTube.  I used all three versions, starting with Aesop's original and moving through them as they are listed in this paragraph.  Young children are benefited by repetition in regard to understanding (as are adults when learning something new really) so it does not get boring - especially since you are adding a new medium with each step through the three.

Other Great Stories with a theme involving loyalty:
Josefina and the Story Quilt - We talked a lot about Faith's Sense of loyalty toward her chicken, Josefina.
This blog article lists and briefly describes another five picture books with a loyalty theme.
 

Literary Unit: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Before beginning on this story with your children, you may be interested to know there is quite a controversy over reading order of The Chronicles of Narnia.  If you care to make a specific choice considering these arguments, I have included a summary of the information here.

At this point, Alice has only read chapter 1 of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (hereafter referred to in the following abbreviated form: LWW) but I do plan on having her do a more traditionally "academic" study of the book.  I found the resource guides provided by the C.S. Lewis Foundation exceedingly helpful in forming my plans with her.  For those of you with Middle School Children, this single guide (and its partner, the "Values Guide" also on the link) will be a wonderful resource.  For readers that are a bit younger than the children for which this guide was intended, I have made some adaptations as follows.

I printed the Educator's Guide that specifies vocabulary, critical thinking and etc. out and then added pages at the end of each chapter in the guide to create a sort-of workbook for Alice.

I plan to have her spend a day or two with each chapter at least.  The idea is that she answer the Vocabulary, Fill in the Blanks, True and False and Comprehension questions while reading or immediately after finishing each chapter.  The Write, Discuss, Create section is the part that will be a lot more time consuming (and since the whole thing is designed for classrooms it does not always fit our situation).  Often, she will be given the "discuss topic" as an alternative writing topic or she and I will just discuss it together.  I may not expect her to handle both the "Write," "Discuss" AND "Create" rather, she will often be asked to do only two of the three, or discuss all and only do one of the  three in a written form.

The story is ultimately set in Narnia, but begins in the UK during World War II.  The Pevensie Children have been evacuated from their homes and are just moving in with a "professor" in the country.  For today's children to understand the historical context, they will need a bit of an explanation to understand what is going on.  BBC Schools - Primary History offers a wonderful resource for a quick or extensive look at this part of history and what children like the Pevensie Kids were experiencing.  For a quick look, explore the heading "Evacuation."  I'd recommend a more extensive look at some point.  However, a word of caution; I suggest previewing the site with your child so you can discuss sensitive topics such as Nazi treatment of Jews, civilian casualties and the dropping of the atom bomb together.  Alice enjoyed going shopping and learn how rationing impacted what was available for eating, reading the articles and of course, playing the time-capsule game.  She was horrified to learn about the Nazi's and their treatment of Jews and other marginalized groups such as the handicapped, but it is a part of our history that cannot be covered up or ignored.    If you are a home-schooling family with elementary kids, I highly suggest bookmarking this resource.  We have used it in our studies of Ancient Greece, India, and Rome as well - it is fabulous!

Also from BBC Schools - Primary, is this page all about Lewis himself.  The wonderful thing for a child to know, is that Lewis took in three children during the time of the war himself.  While the children he took in were not exactly Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmond, the children he did shelter helped inspire him to write for children and ultimately were a big part of why The LWW (and successive stories) got written in the first place.  Part of learning about literature includes learning about its authors.  As learning coach, you might appreciate this article about Lewis for its rich background information on how he viewed himself with kids.  Lewis wrote and corresponded with a number of Children.  Many of these letters have been published in this book - which though I have not read it yet, is on my wish list.

I have incorporated these printables options for adaptations to the Lewis Foundation's Educator's Guides for chapters 1 -3 below.  By clicking on them and opening as a separate page, you should be able to print them for your own use.  I ask that credit for their inspiration be given to the C.S. Lewis foundation for question and activity ideas.  For that reason, I will also input their user statement here and ask that it be applied to my alterations and additions as well:

They may be downloaded in their entirety, copied and pasted into learner activities and used, in part or in whole, as deemed most appropriate to the learning styles and developmental levels of particular student groupings.

For Vocabulary, Comprehension, True/False questions and more for each chapter, make sure to check out the original guide at the C.S. Lewis Foundation website.

Lewis felt that it was wonderful for kids to read the Narnia stories for the sake of enjoying the land of Narnia alone, but it does also contains Christian themes.  For more information about Christian aspects of his tale, I highly suggest checking out the Great Course Series Life and Writings of C.S. Lewis for a full accounting of the Christian messages within the tale.  While I am, a scientist who disagreed with a few intermediary remarks made by professor Markos in the lectures, the entire course was engaging to hear and eye-opening about Lewis himself, and his beliefs as depicted in his writings on the whole.  I enjoyed every minute of the lessons and feel inspired to read some of Lewis' non-fictional works after having heard the lecture series.  If you can't purchase the course, it is possible it is available within your library system, or you can get a basic summary of SOME of Lewis' Christian Themes and so-called allegory contained within the Narnia Chronicles with this online article.  This PBS special, might also be of interest.  I have not yet been able to view it, but hope to do so in the near future.

At the end of chapter three, I plan to take an extra day to Have a Look at Loyalty using one of Aesop's Fables.  We will then discuss Edmond as a character choosing to express his loyalty to either the White Witch or to his Siblings.  For access to this lesson and its related activity pages, click here.

Sparknotes also offers a guide to the book with chapter summaries and an analysis of major characters, themes and motifs.

Showtime for teachers presents a study guide for children having viewed the play.  This short study guide has even more wonderful activities that are suited to the Elementary school student and can easily be incorporated into your own "workbook creation."  If you let your child see the whole thing before finishing the book, you will give away some of the secrets, but by stragegically separating the guide into pages for your kids within the context of reading, as you read, you have one more wonderful resource for ideas.  There is even a recipe for making your own Turkish Delight.  Tempting as it may be, these delights don't have quite the same magical qualities as the White Queen's.


For later Chapters in The LWW and their associated resources (part two), Click Here

Young Children and Deception

Discovering how to be deceptive is common in the preschool child but boy it sure is a tough one to deal with. It is really difficult for a preschooler to understand long - term consequences and benefits of anything let alone when it is something that seems beneficial in the short term.   

Preschoolers and other young children (Toddler - Early Elementary) don't typically have a lot of experience with the contrast between trust or lack-of-trust.  Hopefully, most of the people they encounter are pretty trustworthy most of the time.  The idea of trustworthiness as compared to a lack of trust is usually novel to them.  This was something we really struggled with Alice on for awhile between the ages of three and four - and although she is honest most of the time, there are still times she is certainly tempted. 

For a child that is an auditory learner and relates well to stories, two classics to take a look at are: "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "Pinnochio".  My own little one was still unable to explain why other characters in a variety of modern takes on a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" as well as the original did not go to the boy's aid at the end of the story right up until recently.  

In order to teach the concept of "trustworthiness" and how easy it is to lose the status of being trustworthy, I found a suggestion where family members take one another for "trust walks" online and laughed at myself for not having thought of it on my own because it was something I did almost every year with my middle-schoolers.  You know, you pair up and one member is blindfolded and then you trade. Go through the exercise and be trustworthy, but then ask of the child (children), "how would you have felt if I had . . . " and then fill in with an untrustworthy action.  When we finally did this activity a few years ago, the difference between before the trust walk and after was dramatic.  It really sent the message home in regard to what her daddy and I had tried to express to her so many times before.

Once the concepts of trustworthiness and honesty are understood, many families, including ours, use the "second consequence" tact.  The idea is that there is a second consequence added onto any original consequence that would have existed without the lie.  When children know this is coming it can be a good deterrent to lying.  We also continue to discuss how important trust is and remind about the natural consequence of "loss of trust" whenever this "second consequence" must be used.  As often as is possible, there is a third "consequence" that drives this point home soon after a situation where a lie has been used.  For example, "no, you can't go to your friend's house because I can't trust you to clean up your messes without me watching over you" (when a child has claimed to have cleaned something up that didn't really get cleaned)  "I guess you'll have to work on earning back more trust by being more honest".

I feel the more ways the discussion can be had and the topic can be addressed, the sooner and more fully the importance of trustworthiness and how to maintain it will be understood.  I do know this will be an "on going" discussion in any household as the temptations simply become greater as they continue to get older. I'd love to hear what did you do or what you plan to do with your own when the time comes.

Since we were having all the trouble with lying, we have also worked with a book titled, "E Is for Ethics" by Ian James Corlett. It is a wonderful book with many more subjects than honesty and trust (but these two subjects are addressed as individual subjects as well)  Each chapter begins with a story that is basically a kid- sized conundrum about what the right thing to do is.  The book sets up the story and then gives guides for how to go about discussing the best outcome with your kids.

Just remember,  lying is a natural thing for kids to try out a few times.  The fact that they've lied a few times, doesn't make them a bad kid - its just an opportunity to learn and practice better choices and habits.  What will help your kid most is if you stay calm, don't worry about it too much but apply appropriate consequences and apply them consistently.