Toothpaste Lesson

Materials

Use a word from the recording Teaching Peace
Toothpaste
Paper
Brown paper lunch bag
Markers

Preparation

Draw a face on the brown paper bag using the markers, it doesn't have to be fancy, just to show that it is a person

Procedure

1. Play the song Use a word in the classroom. Discuss what Red Grammer is trying to convey in this song.

2. Take a piece of paper and set it on a desk and hold over the top of the paper a tube of toothpaste. This is where you discuss words that you don't want ever to be heard in your classroom. For example the word shut up. You have someone say the word shut up and you squeeze out a little bit of toothpaste after saying the word.

3. Then you have students come up one at a time, have them say a word and squeeze out some of the toothpaste onto the paper. Then have a student come up, hand him the tube of toothpaste and ask him to put all of the toothpaste back into the tube. Give other children an opportunity to try.

4. At the end of this lesson you stress that you can't take back words once they're out of your mouth just like you can't push the toothpaste back into the tube.

5. A variation that you could use on the same day or another day is the lunch bag face. Fill the bag up with air and tie it off. Again, have children say some bad words. Each time a bad word is said, like shut up, dummy, etc. you scrunch up the bag a little bit each time until the bag has being scrunched into a ball and the air is no longer in the bag (I would squish the bag as opposed to punching the bag so you don't give kids the wrong idea.). The open the bag back up and show that it is the same person but you can't get the bag to look exactly the way it was at the beginning; the bag changed just like a person changes when they constantly hear bad things said about them.