during childhood is a time of social development. Read Social Development through block play .
Two kids are playing with blocks. One bully says to the kids,
“These are my blocks.”
The other kids cry and the bully smashes the blocks into pieces. The kids pick up the broken pieces and begin to play.
The bully sees the kids playing and gets even angrier. He says,
“teacher those kids are stealing my blocks.”
What happens next is really
Should she let them resolve it themselves or should she give the bully a time out. This seems to be a reasonable solution. Non-interference allows the children time to resolve conflicts.
Still the teacher’s guidance and clear supervision is necessary to prevent violence. Giving the bully a time out may work in some cases. Another way to deal with this problem is to take the blocks away from everyone and have no block time until everyone learns to play fairly. This may work but may get the bully more irritated to act violently.
Some teacher may actually believe the bully’s story and tell the kids to give their blocks back to the bully. In the case of the cartoon the teacher becomes the Smack Panther and returns the blocks to their rightful owners in a heroic Robin hood fashion.
if you were the teacher in this kindergarten classroom?
