Last week, 5th graders in Mrs. Johnson’s class did a group activity. They were given a tube of toothpaste, plate, and plastic silverware. The first instruction they were given was to empty the toothpaste onto the plate. Then they had to get every last drop back into the tube. They had some very creative ideas such as: blowing on the tube to open it back up, putting some on their fingers and trying to push it back in, and using the fork to put it back in. In the end, they decided this was an impossible task. After we cleaned up, we read the book, “I Can’t Believe You Just Said That!” This book talks about saying rude things to people and how that is not polite. We then discussed that the toothpaste activity was like the book because we can apologize for what we said, but we can never take back what we said. That is just like the fact that we can never put all the toothpaste back in the container. Everyone learned a great lesson from this activity.
