Teaching Sequence

15 minutes

Tune In: Watch the episode

30 minutes

Find Out: Role-play for social and emotional learning

15 minutes

Take Action: Caring and kindness in action

Tune In: Watch the episode

Step 1.

Begin by watching the Bluey episode Tickle Crabs.

Bluey 'Tickle Crabs' - ClickView (https://clickv.ie/w/qkmx)

Tickle Crabs synopsis: When Dad brings home a pair of tenacious tickle crabs back home from the beach, nowhere in the house is safe! His only hope of escaping their tickles is with the help of his one true love.

Step 2.

Reflect on the episode with children using these questions as prompts:

I wonder why Bandit needed the help of his one true love?
I wonder how Bandit showed he understood Chilli’s needs?
Did he stop hiding and go and face the tickle crabs himself?
Did he put his feelings aside and help Chilli?
Did Bandit and Chilli work together in the end to stop the tickle crabs? Did they take turns in protecting themselves from the tickle crabs?

Using questions that focus on ‘I think...’ statements helps children share their own thoughts and ideas about what is happening. In forming an ‘I think...’ statement, children begin a thinking process about what they experience. Discussing caring and kindness using ‘I wonder’ statements in combination with ‘I think that’ is a powerful approach. This allows open-ended wonderings to be shared with ‘I think…’ thoughts.

Find Out: Role-play for social and emotional learning

Preparation

Ropes to make a crab circle: Place skipping ropes in a circle, use all that you can find to create a large circle that can fit eight chairs placed inside with room for the children to move around.
Eight chairs to be used as rocks which the crabs can hide under as homes
Crab catchers (2): Hi-Vis tops or other tops
Crab clothes (10): Coloured fabric or art smocks tops for the tickle crabs 10 tickle crabs (anything you have easily on hand to let the children become the crabs)
Rock monitors (8): Coloured fabric or art smocks for the rock monitors to help the tickle crabs safely under the rocks
Transporters (4): Caps or hats that the children wear outside.

Caring can be as simple as listening to someone when they speak and let you know how they are feeling. Kindness is an active response showing that you care. Kindness comes from the heart and allows the needs of others to be addressed before your own.

In early learning settings, we see the acts of caring every day. These acts can be as simple as waiting for a turn or helping a friend who has hurt themselves. For some children, showing empathy, caring, and kindness comes naturally. They are wonderful carers and seem to know where to show kindness. For others, these skills are not as easy to recognise and enact. As early years educators, our role is to model visible ways of caring and showing kindness. This modelled behaviour helps children identify what caring looks like, where acts of kindness are important, and that in performing acts of caring and kindness, our immediate needs might not always be met by others.

Step 1.

Invite the children to look at what has been set up, with the rope laid out around the chairs that are placed in the middle of the space.

Begin to tell the story of the young tickle crabs visiting the 'Tickley Days Early Learning Centre':

The young tickle crabs spend each day at the Tickley Days Early Learning Centre beach, where they are learning what to do on the beach. Today they are learning about what happens with the tides. When the tide is out, they can run around, look for food and have some fun. When the tide comes in, they need to scurry away from the waves and find a rock (chair) to hide under. Hopefully, the rock will look after them! When the tide goes out again, they can leave their rock - but if this was a good rock, they might want to say thank you and kindly ask if they can come back again. At the end of the day, the tide comes in again, and the sun begins to set. It's time for the tickle crabs to return to the big beach. But they need help getting there as they are too small (and silly) to go alone. Firstly, they will need to head back to the rocks. From there, the crab catchers need to gently catch them. The crab catchers take the tickle crabs to the transporters, who take the tickle crabs back to the big beach..

Step 2.

Ask the children these inquiring questions:

How will you use caring and kindness to get the tickle crabs to go to the rocks?
Why is it important that the tickle crabs go back to the beach?

Step 3.

Describe the roles to the children (ideally each child should have a role to play, adjust the numbers up or down according to the group size):

Ten tickle crabs - wear crab clothes and wait to be helped
Eight rock monitors - wear coloured fabrics or smocks, and sit on the chairs using kindness to help the crabs hide from the sun
Two tickle crab catchers - wear Hi-Vis tops and gently help the crabs get into the beach transporters
Four beach transporters - wear caps or hats and carefully drive the crabs to the beach.

Give out the dress-ups or costumes for the game to be played.

Step 4.

To begin the game, organise the children into their roles. Let them know that they have an important job to do to help the tickle crabs get back to the beach. In this social-emotional game, the children explore how to help others and show kindness and caring for others.

The change of tides occurs for approximately 1-2 minutes (depending on the children). You can use the instructions below to guide your game:

Tide is in: The tickle crabs are all out and about, feeding and having tickle crab fun. It's fun to be a tickle crab, tickling away at the beach.
Tide is out: The tickle crabs must scurry away, to a friendly rock place. Can the tickle crabs find a home? Just ask a friendly rock monitor: can I please stay with you?
Tide is in: The tickle crabs can leave their rock homes, and scurry about looking for food. But each tickle crab will need to return to the safety of a rock when the tide changes. Will the tickle crabs thank their rock monitor friends, so they let them stay another time?
Tide is out: It's late in the day and you're running out of time to make it to the big beach. The tickle crabs will need to hurry back to the rocks. Return to the rock monitor safety and kindly to ask if you can stay.
Tickle crab catchers: Now that the tide is in the tickle crab catchers gently come and tell the tickle crabs it's time to leave. The tickle crabs carefully come out and go with the tickle crab catchers. Give the children 1-2 minutes to collect the crabs from the rocks.
Tickle crab transporters: The tickle crab catchers take the tickle crabs to the tickle crab transporters. They are waiting with a towel to take them safely to the beach. The transporters put them into the car and drive them home to the big beach. Give the children one to two minutes to drop the crabs off at the beach.

Take Action: Caring and kindness in action

Step 1.

Bring the children back to the floor to talk about what they saw happening in the tickle crab game. As educators, we want to see if the children can recognise where they saw caring and kindness taking place.

Use these guiding questions to help them identify the actions of caring and kindness:

What actions of kindness did you see happening in the tickle crab game?
Did you see a tickle crab asking a rock monitor if they could shelter under their rock?
Did you see the tickle crab helping take care of the tickle crab?
Who else did you see taking care of the tickle crabs?
What were they doing to show kindness?

Step 2.

Allow the children to continue playing the tickle crab game. Set back and watch as the children explore the concepts of caring and kindness.

Possible lines of development

Play the game again, swapping roles.
Work with children to create kindness cards with acts of kindness on them that children can do for people. They can choose one act a day/week.
Do some research together into some of the different types of crabs you might find at the beach, such as hermit crabs, mud crabs, giant crabs or swimmer crabs.

Caring - The Caring Crabs Game

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