Kind Garden Helpers

Worms, bees, ladybirds, birds. Helpers. And then the harder half, which is the things children want to squash.

The sheet takes a position. Almost nothing in the garden needs killing, and the ones that do, we can name. That position is worth taking explicitly at five, because the alternative attitude is learned just as easily and is much harder to undo later.

We do not pretend everything is lovable. Mosquitoes are discussed honestly.

The page has the helper cards, a sorting frame, and a short discussion script for the difficult cases. The script exists because this conversation goes wrong when improvised. We improvised it for a year and produced a class that thought ants were evil.