Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

"Thank goodness for all of the things you are not.  

Thank goodness you're not something someone forgot."

~ Dr. Seuss

Well tis' the season!  I'm sure you've noticed the influx of Seuss related crafts and lessons that come out this time every year.  A lot of schools do some kind of Seuss related activity to celebrate the authors birthday and life of children's amazing literature.  Among other things I decided to try an emotional education lesson this week using one of my favorite Seuss books "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are".  

One thing that surprised me was the difficulty of explaining the concept of "luck" to children.  Most children believed that it had something to do with money.  Winning money, finding money, having money.  And yes, in some cases that is true, but we also talked a lot about luck just generally being something good that happens to us.  Finding a toy we lost, having a family that loves us, winning a contest.  We also discussed what unlucky meant, which we decided was when something bad happens to us but we didn't do anything wrong.  Losing a toy or pet, tripping and falling down, knocking over a glass of milk at dinner.  These are difficult concepts for 4-year-olds, but we read the book over a few days and reinforced our ideas before each reading.  

I decided not to go into the idea of other people being more unlucky than us because it was a little advanced for kids who are still trying to understand any kind of luck at all.  I did, however, at the end go through and ask each child to name something that made them feel lucky.  Something that made them feel good inside.  Pretty much every child named their parents or family, so after each answer I would reinstate that they felt lucky to have a family that loved them; which hey, lets admit, is the best luck of all.  

Every once in awhile I'll do a lesson with my kids that reminds me how much learning we take for granted.  I don't remember learning what luck was, or how to define the feeling of something going wrong or right for me that I had very little to do with.  And sure, these kids would probably learn this on their own someday... but it never hurts the odds to have a head start!

Teach on!