Customer Reviews

The Peaceful Classroom: 162 Easy Activities to Teach Preschoolers Compassion and Cooperation

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I love this book!! It has lots of activities that are easy, fun, different and productive. It's well organized. And most importantly, the effect is to provide a "peaceful classroom" which will hopefully provide a more peaceful world in the future.

I used these techniques while teaching elementary school and they work! Any time the students in my class got into an argument, we stopped and did what is suggested in The Peaceful Classroom book. I found that it helped my students learn to feel and empathize with others and develop a healthy sense of compassion. My classroom was known as the Peaceful Classroom!

It's not just financiers and politicians who need to have a moral basis for their actions. Teachers can also contribute meaningfully to society by helping their students to develop skills that enable them to be responsible and creative citizens. In this very welcome book for pre-schoolers, therefore, the author (who is professor of Human Development at Kansas State University in Manhattan) focuses on friendship skills, compassion skills, cooperation skills, and kindness skills. These quantitatively un-measurable factors have largely been left behind in the testing frenzy that is taking over education. But as Einstein tells us, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Having said this, it's great to see a book that is so practical, with so many wonderful examples of how to promote a non-threatening learning and living environment, through simple, peaceful learning activities. If we want to change society, then the classroom is a very good place to start, and being friendly, compassionate, cooperative, and kind, do not exclude students from passing exams. Rather, they make for better future professionals and human beings. Surely, this is the role of the teacher.

I am greatly impressed with this resourceful book. There are numerous games and ideas for any teacher to use and even extend on. The thought put into this book is tremendous and I recommend any pre-school teacher to have this as part of their classroom. The very first game we played with my 3 to 6 year old group was well recieved and the children look forward to the co-operative games we play. Every child is boosted in their self esteem through fun and laughter. Thank you.