The Kangaroo’s sock

ABOUT THE BOOK
FAMILY ACTIVITIES

text: najea zreek / illustrations: areej samara

The kangaroo loses its sock and goes out accusing his friends of stealing it, until he discovers that he is wearing it, so he returns to apologize. This is a story about our relationship with our friends, and how we deal with them.

Family Activities

The kangaroo thinks that one of his friends stole his sock, so he gets angry and rushes to accuse his friends one by one, with uncontrollable feelings of anger. However, he gets stuck in the mud and his friends come to his support.

Video

Dear parents.

The book presents us with daily life situations in which our child’s feelings control their behavior, especially the feelings of anger, and highlights the importance of supporting and accompanying the child in order to enhance self-awareness, based on understanding their feelings, naming them and knowing their causes and realizing their impact on their behavior. We can do so through a dialogue with them about their experiences and by giving them practical tools for self-control.

The book also brings up the topics of friendship and empathy. Saroaa’s friends helped him, despite his annoying behavior when he approached them. He, in his opinion, returned the favor later.

The book gives us an opportunity to engage with our child about the skills of building friendships and gives us the opportunity to develop these skills by addressing the state of anger that the kangaroo experienced and its impact on his behavior with friends, as well as by addressing the feelings of sympathy that his friends expressed and their support for him.

Enjoy your reading!

Family Activities

Let’s have a conversation
About the relationship of feelings and beliefs to behaviors: The kangaroo thinks that one of his friends stole his sock. His belief provoked a feeling of anger. We can ask our child: How did the kangaroo act when he felt angry? What did he say to each of his friends? How did the friends feel and how did they act? Was the kangaroo’s guess right or wrong? How do we know that? Where did he find his sock?
About self-control and managing our feelings: the kangaroo got angry and could not control his feelings and accused his friends of stealing. We can discuss feelings of anger with our child and ask them: Why do they get angry? How do they act when they are angry? What helps them calm down? Did they ever get angry and regret their behavior?
About supporting friends: The kangaroo’s friends sympathized and rushed to support him when his leg got stuck in the mud. We can talk about that with our child and ask them: Has anyone ever helped them? Have they helped someone even though they misbehaved with them? How did they feel, and how did the others feel?
About apologies: The kangaroo knits socks to express his apology to his friends. We can talk with our child about ways of expressing our apology when we make a mistake, and we can search for another way with them that the writer of the book hinted to.
Let’s act
We can choose a situation with our child in which they felt angry. We can take turns and act it out. We can talk and then discuss their feelings. We can present our child with a model for expressing anger in a legitimate way, such as naming their feelings, describing the reason for feeling this way, and talking about the method that helps them calm down. We can practice acting out ways of expressing feelings.
Let’s enrich our language
Our story is rich in mental and emotional vocabulary, for example: surprising; confused; annoyed; hesitating...and other words that we can search for. We can explain the new vocabulary and ask our child when they feel like that. This way, we can facilitate their acquisition by using them in our daily life.
Let’s communicate and create
Our story ends with the question: “What did the kangaroo write to his friends?” Together with our child, we can prepare beautiful greeting cards and messages for friends and relatives to give them as gifts on various occasions.