The book A Bad Case of Stripes has long been a favourite. Â In it, Camilla Cream gets a bad case of stripes because she doesn’t want to stand out, so she won’t admit to liking lima beans. The illustrations are great, the story is fun, and there is an opportunity for discussions afterwards on things such as bullying and being yourself.
After reading this book again to the kids, we did a few activities. Â They had a lot of fun! Â I think they especially enjoyed what we did to correlate to this book because we’ve read it so many times over the years that it’s familiar to them.
They especially got a kick out of this:
I printed out a picture of each of them and they gave themselves a bad case of stripes using markers. Â This is Snuggle Puppy’s finished work.
We also had a muffin tin lunch to go with the theme. Â Only a few things go with it as I just threw it together, but the kids liked it anyway and they all tried the lima beans. Â Some liked them, some did not!
-tomatoes
-cooked sausage
-striped fruit roll up
-chocolate zucchini cake
-plantain chips
-and of course, LIMA BEANS!
We had a discussion about the things that make us unique and how we should be proud of those things, not embarrassed about them. Â The kids talked about their feelings when they have been made fun of for being different. Â Then I had them each make an outline of themselves and in it, draw pictures of write words of things that they like. Â This is Miss Optimism’s. Â In case you can’t tell, that is a horse, a coconut, and an eggplant. Â She also added wavy hair and green eyes as other things that make her unique.