Humour 

Year 2: We need to use love and kindness before we use humour.

Core Story

Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. Chrysanthemum thinks her name is perfect – until she starts school and the other children tease and make fun of her. However, the other children soon come to realise that it is wonderful to be named after a flower and the bullies soon try to adopt flowery nicknames, though none of them are as perfect as Chrysanthemum.

Drawing out the virtue

Why is Chrysanthemum so upset?
What kinds of things did the other children say about her name? 
They say her name is too long, they pretend to pick and smell her because she’s named after a flower. They say that she lives in the ground with worms. 

Are any of the things the children say true? Are they funny? How does this teasing make Chrysanthemum feel?  She felt miserable, she had nightmares about it, she didn’t want to go to school. What reason did her mum and dad give to explain why the children were unkind about her name? – the other children are jealous. 

Activity 1:  When laughing isn’t funny

Role-play, with puppets or another adult in the room, making fun at someone else’s expense. For example, the puppet slips over or gets a question wrong.  How could being funny hurt someone’s feelings? What sorts of funny but nasty things can children do that hurt other children’s feelings?  Mimic; laugh if they make a mistake; call names; say funny things about their name or family, or something they do or don’t have. As a class make a list of words to describe how it feels when someone makes fun of you.  What could we do to make sure we don’t hurt other children’s feelings? Think about how we would feel if someone did the same thing to us.

Activity 2: Being assertive

Explain that bullying is when someone keeps on being unkind to the same person. Bullying isn’t something that happens once but it happens over and over again. A bully might hurt someone’s body or their belongings, or they might be unkind with words. Any kind of bullying is very serious and can be very upsetting, just like the Chrysanthemum in the story is upset.

Lead a discussion with pupils – if someone starts to be mean to you, what could you do? Teach them to make a ‘stop’ gesture with their hand and list these strategies.

1.  Ignore them

2. Move away

3. Ask them to stop in a polite voice.

4.  Tell them to stop in a confident voice ‘Stop! I don’t like it!” “Leave me alone!”

5.  Tell a teacher

Show pupils the PowerPoint Y2 Humour  to show that when animals feel threatened they also do things to warn people and other animals to leave them alone. This includes making themselves look bigger than they really are. Ask pupils to work in Perfect Partners and practise standing tall, looking each other in the eye without smiling and saying ‘Stop!’ in their confident voices.