This past week I spent time with Year 3. They are always a lot of fun to teach and this past week was no exception! We had a look at different sorts of routines that we can do during the day. We also watched a video about Larry the cucumber.

Larry has just had a shower and he discovers that he has lost his hairbrush! He looks for it singing "Oh where is my hairbrush?" An old man pea walks in and says "I think I saw a hairbrush back there!!" This leads Larry to sing about maybe the hairbrush being back there. Then an asparagus called Junior walks in (he is a child - a humorous reference to a baby asparagus). He says to Larry "Why do you need a hairbrush, you don't have any hair?" This shocks Larry as he had never thought about it before! So he sings about not having any hair for his hairbrush. Then the tomato walks in and apologises as it transpires that the tomato had given Larry's hairbrush to the peach as the peach actually does have hair. Larry sings about how unfair it is. The peach then comes in and says thank you to Larry for giving him the hairbrush and although Larry is sad about his hairbrush he is happy that he was able to help in some way and he recognised that good had been done for the peach so he concludes with singing - "take care of my hairbrush!"

Now when we look at this song it may seem a little silly when it is sung and visually it is a lot of fun and many of the children founf it amusing. However I think there are some good lessons in this as well! One of the things that we can recognise is that although we may not realise it - people can put value in their possessions. So we shouldn't cast off what other people have as nothing when actually they might care about it. In this case the tomato didn't recognise that Larry actually wanted his hairbrush and liked it - so he made the decision to give it away. Yet this was not his decision to make and caused Larry some heartache. It's why we shouldn't devalue something of someone else's. We should be able to respect that the other person likes it - whether it be an object or a person or a class.

Another lesson learned is that sometimes there can be things that we actually don't need which can be given away. Hopefully you can make the decision yourself before any 'helpful' tomatoes step in! Just as Larry realised that he didn't have any hair and so it was pointless having a hairbrush - what do we have that can be of good for someone else? At the end of last year I bought a big Mike Wasowski plush toy. I loved it and it was something that was a throwback to my childhood. Some people thought that it was ridiculous that I would buy it! A couple of months later I gave it away - I liked having it because it was a funny thing to have around and was a reminder of my youth. But ultimately I decided that I could give it to a child to enjoy as they probably would more than me. So that Christmas a little 3 year old boy ran down the stairs on Christmas day to discover a big Mike Wasowski underneath the tree. What do we have that we can use to do good for others? Is it giving something to them or maybe just being kind? Because we all have the ability to do something whether or not it is small or large! We can do it!