ANALYTIC TEACHINC • Vol. fl, No. ,

Using Peter Rabbit'as a PhIlosophical Textwith Young Children

DAVID ICENNEDY

nee upon a time there were four little Rab­bits, and their names were - Flopsy,Mopsy, CoUon-tail, and Peter. They rIVed

iiiiiiiiiiiii with their Mother In a aand-bank, under­neath the root of a very big fll'-cr.e.~ow, my dears: said old Mrs. Rabbit one morn­

ing, -you may go Into the fields or down the lane, butdon~ go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father hadan accident there; he was put In a pie by Mrs.McGregor. Now run along, and don't get intx:l mis­chief. I am going out.·

Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her um·brella. and went through the wood to the baker's.She bought a 10m of brown bread and fiv. currantbuns.

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottcn-tail, who were good lil·tie bun.... went down the lane to gather blackber­ries: but Pet«, who was very naughty, ran straightaway to Mr. McGregor's garden. and squeezed un­der 1M gatel. F'nt he m. earn. lettucaa and some Fr.nch

beans; Mel then he at. 10m. radishes; and then,fHling rmher sa. he went to look for 10m. parsley.But round the .nd of a ax:urnber fram., whomshould be meet but Mr. McGregorl

Mr. Mc:Gregorwa on his hands and knHS plant­ing out young cabbages, but h. jumped up and ranafter Peter, waving a rake and calling out. ·SIOpthiefr

Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed aJJover the garden, for he had forgotten the way back tothe gate. He lost one of his shoes among the cal>bages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes. Af·

tel' losing them, he ran on four legs and went faster,10 that I think he might have got away a!Iogether ifhe had not Unfortunately run into • gooseberry net.and got caught by the large buttons on his jad<el Itwas a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.

Peter gave himself up for lost. and shed big tears;but his sobs were overheard by some friendly spaT'

f'OW$. who flew to him in great excitement. and im­plored him to exert himself. Mr. McGregor came ~with a sieve, whk::h he intended to pop upon the topof Peter; but Peter wriggled out just In time, leavinghis jacket behind him. And rushed Into the toolshed,and jumped Intx:I a can. It would haw been a beauti·ful thing to hide in. if it had not had so much water init. -

Mr. McGregor was quite su,. that Peter was sam..where In the tool-shed. perhaps hidden underneath aftower-pol He began to tum them over carefuUy,baking under eadt. Presently Pet.r ,,,..zed ­1<ertyschoor Mr. McGregor was" after him In no time.And tried to put his fool upon Peter, who jumped outof a window, upsetdng three plants. The window wasIDa amal for Mr. McGregor. and h. was tired of ru~ning after Peter. He went back to his i!!1:

Peter SIll down to rest; he wu~ brNlh andnmbling with fright, and h. had not the lust Ideawhich way to go. Also he wa very damp with sittingin that can. After a time he began to wander about,going Iippity - rlppity - not very fast. and looking allround.

He found a door In a wall; but It was locked, andthere was no room for a fat liltJe rabbit to squeeze un·derneath. Art old mouse was running In and out overthe stone doorstep, c:anying peas and beans to herfamily in the wood. Peter asked her the way to thegate, but she had such a larg. pea In her mouth thatshe could not answer. She only shook her head athim. Peter began to cry.

53

.

NOVEMBER 1992

Then he tried to find his way straight across thegarden. but he became more and more puzzled.Presently, he came to • pond where Mr. McGregorfilled his water-eans. A white cat was staring at somegold-fish, she sat very. very still. but now and thenthe tip of her tail ~N:tchtrd as if it Wif. anwi. Piilerthought it best to go away without speaking to her; hehad heard about cats from his cousrn. little BenjaminBunny.

He went back towards the tool-shed. but suddenly.quite close to him. he heard the noise of a hoe­scr·(·ritdl. scratch. scratch, scritch. Peter scutteredunderneath the bushes. But presently. as nothinghappened. he came out. and climbed upon a wheel­barrow and peeped over. The first thing he saw wasMr. McGregor hoeing onions. His back was turned to­wards Peter. and beyond him was the gatel

Peter got down very quietly off the wheelbarrow.and started running as fast as he could go, along astraight walk behind some black-currant bushes. Mr.McGregor caught sight of him at the comer, but Peterdid not care. He srtpped underneath the gate. andwas safe at last in the wood outside the garden. Mr.McGregor hung up the rlltle jacket and the shoes fora scare-erow to frighten the blackbirds.

Pete, never stopped running or Iookad behind himtill he got home to the big fir-tree. He was so tiredthat he flopped down upon the nice soft sand on thefloor of the rabbit-hole and shut his 8)'8S. His motherwas busy CX)()king; she wondered what he had donewith his clothes. It was the second little jacket andpair of shoes that Peter had lost in a fortnightl

I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well dur­rng the evening.

His mother put him to bed. and made some camo­mile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peterl "One ta­ble-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.· But Flopsy,Mopsy. and Cotton-tall had bread and milk and black.­

berries for supper.

Like most literary cbssics for young children,Beatrix Potter's The Tde t1fPaer RAbbit· is rich injust those themes and subtext.s which grip theearly childhood imagination where the construc­tive search for meaning is most intense. Thebook tells a stoJY which the young child recog­nizes intuitively as expressive of his or her dee}>est social and psychological preoccupations. In­deed, this is what good literature does for allages. But is it philosophical? Not intentionally,the way a philosophical treatise, or a so-calledphilosophical dialogue, which is most often onemind ventriloquizing, or even the novels of thesort developed by Mathew Upman for teachingphilosophy to children, are. In good or great liter-

54

ature, the philosophical material typically oper­ates as a subtl:Xt, either more or less explicit; itemerges involuntarily from the themes and nar­,ratives of the srory, rather than the other wayaround. It 2em5 rca.-:onable to expect th.u insome great stories the philosophical materialwould be very accessible, and in others, mort in­choate. One virtue of lipman's pedagogical nov­els, in which the philosophical material is deter­minative of story rather than emerging from it, isthat they train us - if in somewhat of an anifi­cialliterary situation - to look for, find, and ar­ticulate the philosophy in fictional narrative.

I want to offer some methodological reflec­tions on how to U2 a childn:n's classic as a philo­sophical text with children, using Puer Rabbit asan example.. Although these reflections are al­most ccnainly applicable to other books by Bea­trix Potter, all of which c:xplore, with dark,dreamliJc.e, whimsical irony, the psychosocial cos­mos of early childhood, it is less certain they canbe applied more generally to aU good children'sliterature. It would seem more realistic that eachstory would inspire a relatively unique approachto the philosophical preoccupations that charac­terize it, depending on the specific nature or typeof those preoccupations, and on its own particu­lar way of evoking them through fictional narra­tive.' But the analysis that follows may provide aheuristic that is more generally useful in at­tempting to make the connection between themethodology of Philosophy for Children andhigh quality children's lite:r.uure.

-,

NARRATIVE SUBTEXTS .

The sense of depth under deceptive simplicitywhich is characteristic of Peru Rabbit is the ~ultof the interplay of a Dumber of subtexts, whichinteract in prolific and ambiguous ways with thesurface narrative. Actually there are two surfacenarratives: the story and the illustrations. PererRJzbbit is typically read aloud to children, and thepictures and the writte:n-word-rcad-aloud3 com­bine to cute a rich, multi-sensory tc:xtuaJ spaceworthy of the young child's vivid sensorium, in­tense imaginative life, and keen sense of wonder.Within this textual space, at least three levels ofsubtextual narrative pattern can be identified.They provide a context for the identification ofphilosophical material in the text, and its the­matization in discussion plans.

~

)

First, the~ is what I will call the develop­men~ narrative. The major psychosocialthemes of the story - the transgression of boun­daries, conflict with powerful, authoritativeadults, and being killed - are also key themes ofthe psychosocial crisis characteristic of theroughJy 4 to 6 year old child, whom Erikson hasdescribed as p~occupiedwith finding a creativebalance between individual initiative and theguilt aDd fear of annihilation which results from-going too farI and damaging objetts or relation­ships.· The brilliantly energetic, ohen compul­sive >yeM old recognizes him or hendf in Peter,that -titde animaJ· whose drive to become hisown person through exploring and mastering theworld is tragically hemmed round by both innerand outer laws of which he only becomes awanthrough breaJcing them. There are the laws ofmoderation, broken by Peter's gluttony, the lawsof private property represented by Mr. McGregorand his garden, and the -bw of the jungle· ­here, with Potter's characteristially oblique ircrny, the law of the garden - rep~sented by Pe­ter's father's earlier -accident!

Another level of narrative ~tteming I will ca.llthe sodal. It includes economic:, class, and gen­der narratives. Mr. McGregor's garden is a vivid,coherent analogue for the world beyond theyoung child's home: the world of huge, aU­powerful, hostile, ambivalent or ~tronizingadults, and of the confusing laws of who canhave what. It embodies perfectly the orderedchaos of the economics of sardty, where poten­tial allies - other little people - are, like themous«; either too intent on their awn survivalneeds to pull together, or, like the Qt, would justas soon eat you too. Only the sparrows, symbolicof both solidarity and transcendence, urge Petertowuds freedom.

Peter is told by his mother not to get into mis­chief, but it ia this fundamenully mischievousworld of -accidents· - of strUCtUral inequity,do~tion, transgression, and the ever-presentpossibility of being eliminated by a more power­ful player - which be, as a male, must learn tommipulate to his ends. }., a male, Peter must be-~ugh~ in order to survive, although throughbeing naughty, like his father, he may be eaten.As it is, he escapes with.losing his clothes, whichare displayed by the oppressor as a deterrent toother challengers of the system.

Fmally, there is the narrative level which I willall mythic.. Although the developmental narra-

tive is also mythic, its themes - transgression,guilt, the conflict beween the drive for individua­tion and authOrity - are specific to the psycho­social drama of initiative venus guilt. The lugermythic structure of Pmr Rabbi" includes the nar­ratives or parts of the narratives of the trial ofthe hero, the encounter with giants, and the indi­vidual's transgression of limits which leads to hisdownfall.

TIiE PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES

The four narrative levels of the story - thesurface narrative of illustrated text, and the de­velopmental, social, and mythic subtexts - pro­vide a richly layered context of psychological andsocial meanings from which to draw philosophi­cal themes, whether ontological, epistemological,or axiological, and to constnJct discussion plusbased on them. For example the developmentalsubtext, which is about initiative and guilt, in­structs us to pay attention to the >year old'sparticular approach to the idea of the -good' mdthe ~d.• What is and what is not -laughty,'and how do we know when something is 'mis­chief' and when it isn't? Is tbe mouse carryingpeas out of the garden doing mischief, or the catcontemplating the goldfish, or the birds, who arcprobably eating seeds? Did the McCregors dosomething ~d· when they killed and ate Peter'sfather? How would the McGregors themselveslook at it? What are the criteria for calling some­thing -good.~What, ror example, is the differ­ence between a 'good. and a ~d· h.ammer? Icecum cone? Person? Can there be too much of agood thing? Can good come out of a bad thing?Some things sun out bad and come out good,and some things operate the other way around.Can something be both good and bad at thesame time? All of these questions an be instan­tiated with examples from the lives of youngchildren, and the stories they have to tell of theirconflicts, their triumphs, their failures.

The philosophical issues associa ted with thewerd ·accident· arc also informed by the devel­opmental subtext. This is a particularly sensitivetheme for young children, who tend to see all be­havior, even that of inanimate things, as inten­tion-laden, and intuitively undentand aU nature

55

as 'mindful" rather than mechanic.aP Given thisinterpretive bias, 'accident' and 'on purpose'might have a slightly different twist: Was Peter'sfather's demise really an accident?6 Was it an ac­cident that Peter lost his coat and shoes? If hehad been caught, killed, and eaten, would hismother have called it an 'accident'? What kindsof things are 'on purpose'? Does the sun shineon purpose? Do people get angry on purpose?Does the doctor hun you with a needle on pur­pose? Issues of causality are not far behind.When two things happen together, when can wesay that one causes the other?

As for the social subtext, the animals in P~rcr

Ral1bit - who comprise everyone except Mr.McGregor - are, like children, the 'little people'in relation to the -adult' world of the garden.The young child's drive to be a person in herown right is always in the context of the morepowerful, sometimes punitive world of adults.So the animals seem to depend on the humanworld, but only illegally, through stealing. Thiscan lead to a discussion plan about what is steal­ing and what is not. Is the mouse stealing peas?Are you stealing if you taste a grape in a super­market? Are you stealing if you or your familyare starving and you take food from a supennar­k.et? Are you stealing if a big company sends yousomething by mistake and you keep it? Mr.McGregor seems to feel that the gardm 'belongsto' him? What are the criteria for private owner­ship of something?

The dark side of the adult-eh.ild relationship isevoked with ominous power in the encounter be­tweal. Peter and Mr. McGregor, and it raisesquestions about the authority relation betweenchildrm and adults. Do you have to do whatadults teU you to? What forms the basis of theauthority relationship, and what rights do chil­dren have within it~ Then there is the questionof what is the same and what is diffe.n:nt aboutadults and children. This question leads to ques­tions about identity across transformations, andperII1Anence and change. Young children aregrowing physically very fast, and will look verydiffwm in even three or four yean. What staysthe same about you and what changes as yougrow? Will you be the same person when you aregrown up? Adults also change their physical ap­pearance as they get older, but in a differmtway. How do other things - animals, plants,

56

and a variety of objects - change as they getolder? How do they stay the same?

The peculiar, whimsical, and suggestive wayin which animals are presented in Peru Rabbir ­in fact they inhabit an anti-world to the humanworld, v..fuc:h yet interfaces the latter - alsoraises interesting questions about the similaritiesand differences betweeen animals and humans,particularly in the areas of thought and language.I have found that children tend to apply a hu­man thi.nking and talking model to animals untilquite a late age, which makes for good conversa­tions about the discrepencies which show upwhen you try to instantiate that. One might ask,for example, whether wonns, mts, slugs or tad­poles think, plan and talk the way dogs, cats andrabbits do. If not, what are the differences? Thequestion of how animals think and intend andcommunicate is related to the classification issueoE living versus not living things. What are thecriteria for calling something -alive'? Are themoon, the wind, the ocean, the cora! plant or thedandelion seed, or a piece of your skin alive?

The dramatic difference in behavior betweenPeter and the -good little bunnies,' Flopsy, Mop­sy, and Cottontail, raises gender issues. Althoughit is never stated that Peters siblings are girls,there are few readen who don't assume it, an im­pression encouraged by the fact that they dttSSlike their mother, in red capes. four- to seven­year"lds ue·ilready keenly aware of the differ­ences between girls and boys, and usuaUy as­sume genetic causes, an assumption that can beprobed through discussion. If girls and boys'dressed and kept their hair in the same way,how, apart from the differences hidden byclothes, could you tell them apan? And the boy/girl issue is anaJoguous to the animaIlhuman andthe ..dult/child issues, in that all three involvecontrastive pain, in which the relationship be­tween simi.luity and difference is clear in placesand mlbiguous in othm. This makes for richpossibilities for discussion plans.

I have just identified only a handful among anumber of possible philosophical thematizations.Discussion plans could also be built around rulesand breaking rules, getting lost, danger, adven­ture, making mistakes, being afraid, and crying,to name jUst a few more. Exercises could be con­structed around sentence patterns like the coun­terfactual ~t would have been a beautiful thingto hide in, if it had not had so much water in it';

,.

)

;j,

)'

or the ambiguities of meaning in words like ·sor­rY in phrases like ·1 am sorry to say that ... ,. or·time' in ·Mr. McGregor was after him in notime,' or "'care' in -Peter did not care"

INTEGRAnNG THE TEXT WITHPIDLOSOPHY FOR CHILDRENMETHODS AND MATEJUA1S

Once themes have been idmtified, exercisesand discussion plans may be taken from existingPhilosophy for Children manuals and adapted foryoung children, or oew ones may be developed.While the philosophical themes involved tend toemerge from the narrative patterns of the text,which thinking skills we choose to feature in ourdiscussions will depend roughly on the ages andindividual characteristics of the chiJdrm in­volved. With a skilled facilitator, children 4-7 canwork with excitement and rapidly growing skillat making distinctions and connections, classify­ing and categorizing, drawing inferences, predict­ing consequences, and formulating causal expla­natioo.s. Although they are oot used to thesystematic way in which the community of in­quiry practices formulating questions, giving rea­sons, defining terms, providing instances and il­lustrations, and identifying and wing eiteria, allof these moves are part of normal human lan­guage games, and so they have already donethem at one point or another, either more or lessexplicitly. It is their new standardization ingroup discussion that takes practice.

Working with four- to seven-year-olds posesits own particular problems and opportUnities.The young child's love of story and of repetitionare advantages, in that a tat liJce Puu Rabbil canbe read a oumber of times, even before it is ex­plored philosophially, to the point where it isnearly memorized by many children, thus mak­ing the smtegy of retUrning to the text to checkmeaning a n~tural one. That same capacity to bei.m.mcdiately caught up in the mythic ambienceof story makes it easier for young children to ex­plore the text through acting it out, dramatizingit with puppets and musical instruments, or ac­tion figures, and drawing under its inspiratio~

which are ways of familiarizing themselves di­rectlyand non-d.iscursively with the narrativepatte11'15 mentioned above. Doing philosophy

A/fALYTIC T~At.HlNC; • V.I. fl. No. ,

with symbol systems or -intelligences· ache­than the linguistic, logical, and personal - i.e..spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical' - is emi·nendy suited to the young child's multi-sClsorialapproach to lived experience.

Teachers can tell and act out stories withinstories to introduce or enliven discussions. Forexample, two teachers in cirde might dramatizetwo • iiccidents,' one of them due to recklessness,greed, or deviousness, and one not; or two pup­pets with no obvious sexual or gender character­istics might discuss their bewilderment as towhether they are boys or girls.' The youngchild's penona1ized, interactive epistemologicalstyle calls for all manner of concrete demonstra­tion of concepts and relationships, for examplec:xamining reaJ and present animals when dis-­cussing the differences between humans and ani­mals, examining ambiguous photographs whentalking about gmder differences, coordinating adiscussion of changing from a child to an adultwith growing butterflies in the classroom, andbringing in photos &em the family album, and so00.• Finiilly, the young child's participation in thecommunity of inquiry is first centered aroundpersonaJ narrative - around the child's grasp ofhis or her own life as a story which can be re­counted, and which acts as a context for makingjudgments. So the five-year-old says, not -I thinkto be naughty means ...,. bur rather, ·One time,when I was home with my mother, and I want­ed to play with a toy that my little brotherhad... ' The teacher heJps young children to a.rtic­uJate the higher levels of abstraction which areiirready present in the very choice of narrativecontent by the child, and in the language gamesalready being used to interpret experience.

CONCLUSION

It would seem that at least two characteristicsdistinguish a philosophic.a..l novel of the sort de­veloped by Upman hom a children's book whichis rich in philosophical implications: the philo­sophical novel very consciously builds themeslike appearance md reality, the one and themany, diffen:nces of kind iind of degree, etc. intoits narrative, as well as many pretexts for themaking of generic, mediating, and cu1min.atingjudgmmts. IO In addition, its plot and chalacters

57

N"OVEMBER. 1992

invariably model the operation and the develop­ment of the community of inquiry. As such theyare special texts designed for a direct, pedagogicalapproach to the philosphical themes they con­tain. What they share with children's books likePelt' Rabbi' is that they both depend on fictionalnarrative, with the ambiguities and complexitiescreated by its multiple subtexts, to communicateconcepts. It is through working with the phllosc>­phy embedded at a very accessible level in thepedagogical novels that we learn to identify andto find a way of accessing the philosophy embed­ded at a deeper level in children's literature. Thefact that the latter does not directly model thecommunity of inquiIy does not, in my view, dis­qualify it as, in some cases anyway, an appropri­ate pretext for philosophical discussion. In fact avery fruitful interaction between the two sonsof texts is possible, given the different approach­es they offer to the philosophical material theycany.

Nons

1. Beatrix Potter, Pctcr &lrbit {Frederick Wune,1902).

2. This principle is also probably tNCr as in the caseof Bauix Potter, for e.ach major author's work asa whole - whether Aenold Lobel, MauriceSendak, William Steig, Hans Christian Andenen,Else Holme1und Minarik, etc.

3. The written word rud aloud is different fromboth the written word re.ad silently, and thespoken word of stol)'te1li.ng, or even the writtenword dramatiud of the JUy.lt is both a tat anda speech act. .

4. Characterizations of the -eight ages- of the lifecycle are described in Erik H. Erikson, /~"ti'y .rui1111 Life Cycle (Norum. 1980 (1959)); md CJUIJ1sooJ,,"" Soc.ury (Norton, 1963).

5. For an iDter~sting d.i.scussioo of this phenomenon,sec Susan Urey, Cmrce,t1Ull OA"ge i" CJUUiNJoJ(MIT Press, 1985).

6. "Yow f~thu had an accident there8 is & goodopportunity for an c:xacise on uying one thingand ruJ.Iy meaning another, and other forms ofeuphemism and exaggeration.

7. The interface is indeed strange. In the illustr.ltlons,Peter is portrayed like a real rabbit, and he istreated that way by Mr. McGregor; on the otherhand, McGregor hangs Petets clothes on thesan:crow without a second thought. These sortsof ambiguities about the human and the wnW

58

world are pn:scnt in many children's books, andoffer interesting challenges for philosophicalthematization.

8. For a disC\lssion of the six -intelligences,· seeHoward Gardner, Nl1.mtS ofMil'lli (Basic Books,1983). .

9. An excellent guide to presenting such skits,dramatlutions, and ·story problems- to youngchildren, with a we.aJth of concrete examples, isfound in Carolyn Pope Edwards, Pro"""i", MorAl~vtloprru,u irs Y''''"g Qi/Jrc".. C't4tivt A,pTfuuNsfor 'N CL2SSrocrm (re.achen College Press, 1986).

10. For ~ succinct and useful discussion of these threeorders of judgment, see M&tthew Upman,ni"b"g irs EJ!UUtUm (Un'1btidge University Press,1991), pp. 164-173.

DAvid Ke,.lUdy, Ph.D., teAdJ,u iff Ch,1d ",.dFAmily Studies, Nortlum MichigA" University,MArquette, MichigA" And is Cl'-UIitor ofAnAlytic Tuuhi"g.

t-

)

..',

(.'

Peter Rabbit: Forming Communtties of Inquiry in Early Childhood Clusrooms

Exercises and Discussion Plans

Good and Bad and NaughtyIs Peter being naughty?Is the mouse carrying seeds out of the garden being naughty?Is the cat being naughty?Was Mr. McGregor being naughty when he killed Peter's father?What's the difference between -bad- and -naughty-']

Good and BadSay if the following things are good or bad, and why.A hammer A personAn ice cream cone A thoughtA friendship A dayA song A yearA word

AccidentsWas it an accident that Peter's father was killed and eaten by Mr. McGregor?Was it an accident that Peter went to Mr. McGregor's garden?Was it an accident that Peter lost his coat and shoes?Did Peter go to Mr. McGregor's garden on purpose?How can you tell if something is an accident?How can you tell if something is OD purpose?

-~;" ;...... :.~ ~'..... ,

By Accident or 00 Purpose?The sun comes upThe sun comes outA train wreckSomeone gets angry

StealingWas Peter stealing from Mr. McGregor?Was the sparrow stealing?Was the mouse stealing?How can you tell when it's stealing?

It starts rainingA doctor buns someone with a needleYou were bornIt gets dark

. "'0.•.. ~j.}~~..~~.~~" .:":;'.~. '.+- ~...

5 tnllnc or Not?Getting in a stranger's car and driving it awayEating a grape in a supermarketFinding a dollar on the street and keeping itFind a million dollan on the street and keeping itTaking food from a store when you are starvingTaking a cookie when you aren't supposed toTaking a toy from the storeTaking a toy from a baby who doesn't care

Peter Rabbit: Forming Communities of Inquiry in Early Childhood Classroom.

What Thinks?DogsCatsRabbits

WormsRadios

Girls aDd BoysHow are girls and boys the same?How are girls and boys different?What makes you be born a girl or a boy?When girls and boys grow up, will they be different?Why should there be girls and boys?

Girl or Boy?RunCryLaughHit

SleepPlay with doUsPlay with trucksGet in trouble

I

.....: ..

Good Rules or Bad Rules?Don't hurt other people

.Don't laugh at other peopleDrive the speed limitAlways say pleaseDon't wear a hat insideNever speak to strangersNever look at grownups when you talk to themOnly talk to best friendsEat with your fingersSleep only on the groundWatch only 15 minutes of T.V. per day

Getting LostTell a collective story about getting lostHow do you get lost?How do you get unlost?What are the different ways of getting lost?

What's it like to Get Lost?Gening lost is /ike:Having a dreamYour bike breaksFighting with your mother

Being in someone else's storyReading a bookExploring a new place

_,.;t".-~._. "':..~- ..~:. ~~-.:# - ... :

Peter Rabbit: FormIng Communities of Inquiry in Earty Childhood Classroom;)

fJI

itfiI

t

~

_:~:J I~of

y,.;

Can You Get LOSl in it?A movieA bookA city

DangerHave you ever been in danger?Is Mr. McGregor dangerous to Peter?Would he be dangerous to you?Is Peter dangerous to Mr. McGregor?Is Peter dangerous to the cat?Is the mouse dangerous?Are you ever dangerous?

What ts Dangerous?A toasterA lionA bearA kitchen knifeA bathtubA washing machineA frogA mosquitoA shark

What Can Make You Afraid?A movieA songA pictureA noiseA look

When Can You Cry?When you're happyWhen you 're angryWhen you love someone a lotWhen you Jose a gameWhen you break a toyWhen you spill a drink:When someone moves awayWhen you fight with a friendWhen you are proud of someone

A thoughtSomeone's faceYour feelings

A whaleA vacuum cl~erA fan .

A policemanA carA bottle of liquorA dogA eatDarkness

AwardAn animalA penonThe darkWater

)

I

I,!

-.iII,'.

"'~-:

Peter Rabbit: Forming Communities of Inquiry in Eatty Childhood Classrooms

OwningWhllf or whom tin these he/oil); 10. or who owns thtm? How do you know?Your parents' car Your streetYour bed The moonYour hody The oceanYour dog or cat Your thoughtsYour house

Children and GrownupsIs Peter a child? How do you know?What is the same about children and grownups?What is different about children and grownups?Will you still be you when you grow up?What will be the same?What will be different?Will your head, feet, hands, tummy, hair, mouth, eyes be the same?Are there children and grownups among animals?Are there children and grownups among plants?What would the world be like if there were no grownups?What would the world be like if there were no children?What would the world be like if the children told the grownups what to do, and took _ _care of them?What would the world be like if you were born very big and got smaller as you gotolder?

Animals and HumansIs Peter an animal or a human?Is Mr. McGregor an animal or a human?What is the same about animals and humans?What is different about animals and humans?Should animals wear clothes?Do animals think?Do animals talk?Do animals have feelings?Can animals make plans?

)

)

What Talks?A sparrowA catA mouseA cabbageAnts

BeesSlugsTadpolesTreesTelevisions