Fair and Unfair

Themes for this activity are friends, feelings, heroes and sheroes and my people. We ask friends to play this activity because it is regarding being fair or unfair about people who are human and have feelings. We use picture of heroes and sheroes to describe which one is true and which one is pretended.

Materials are “feeling box” or paper sack, collection of actual ethnic objects, pictures that accurately portray people from other cultures; stereotypical objects such as greeting cards, cartoons, holiday decorations, and small toy figures.

This activity is helping children recognize unfair behavior when it occurs. For example, they will recognize that name-calling hurts. Children recognize that some people treat others unfairly because of their differences. They will resist rejecting others. It also helps children think about themselves and learn about the concept of fair and unfair behaviors and helps them to put themselves in another person’s situation and understand the feelings of victims biased behaviors. They will learn to resist name-calling and teasing and the importance of not making judgments based on appearance.

  This activity is appropriate for young children between 3- 8 years, because they can understand the concepts such as everyone is worthy, is lovable, is capable, is equal, is important and has feelings; some things are fair and some things are unfair; some things are real and some are pretend; people work together and help one another (York.pg, 188 chapter 9).

The goal of this activity is thinking critically about bias by:

- Comparing fare and unfair behaviors,

-Recognizing unfair behavior when it occurs, and

-Putting oneself in another person’s situation.

To do this activity, provide some pictures of people who are pretending. These unfair pictures make people look stupid and silly. They make people sad and seeing them hurts their feelings. These pictures are unfair because what they show is not true. Other pictures and objects in the box are fair because they show people as they really are. Seeing fair pictures makes people happy and proud. Place pictures and objects in the “feeling box” or paper sack. Tell the children they can play a guessing game about the many things inside the box. Now you can ask children to close their eyes and pull an item from the box. Meanwhile, you talk about the concepts of fair and unfair. Pull all of the pictures and objects out of the feeling box and put them in two piles: fair and unfair. Then introduce the word stereotype.  

    

I have chosen this activity because I think it is important to practice justice from the early childhood. Teaching social justice helps children to learn about fair and unfair and how to act when they face unfairness. It is helping them to combine with others and to develop their vocabulary and problem-solving. It helps them learn to listen to their feelings; and understand other’s feeling; it develops their feeling of interest to know about and respect human difference and connection to the social world.

 Another activity is, creating a fair play campaign. Basic of fair play should be reflected in it. It is regarding all children’s sports practices.

 This activity introduces and discusses the basic principles of fair play by showing the picture from playing basketball, soccer or hockey match. Then encourage children to pay attention to the pictures of fair and the unfair conducts.

The most important considerations for this activity are:

-Play should be fair,

- Play’s principals should be stated in a positive manner, using appropriate vocabulary.

 Goal of doing this activity is the need for great agreement between children about fair and unfair. One book with subject of fair and unfair is “It’s So Unfair” by Pat Thomson and Jonathan Allen. Another book is “Think Fair Trade First” by Ingrid Hess.

Conclusion:

Being fair is one of the most important things that children must learn because it will affect their whole future life so we as a parent or teacher have to teach by many ways to them to be fair in their life. One of the best things is playing with them based on showing them what is fairly and what is unfairly; give them examples of people or story’s heroes who behaves fair or unfair and explain to them that being unfair hurts others and it is not accepted. Discuss and telling the story about those subject and ask their opinion.

One of the biggest challenges for parents is to teach their children how to play fair. Our children want to win, and we want them to win, but winning must done honestly. Being fair includes kids and adults. If you teach your children to play fair when they are in early childhood, then you should never have to worry about them when they grow up.