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Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine: Your Activity Book to Help When Someone has Died
Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine offers practical and sensitive support for bereaved children. Beautifully illustrated, it suggests a helpful series of activities and exercises accompanied by the friendly characters of Bee and Bear. This book offers a structure and an outlet for the many difficult feelings which inevitably follow when someone dies. It aims to help children make sense of their experience by reflecting on the different aspects of their grief, while finding a balance between remembering and having fun. This book is a useful companion in the present, and will become an invaluable keepsake in the years to come.
36 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2009
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 23, 2017
This is a fantastic book that can be used to support children when someone has died. I have seen this book being used with children throughout the whole primary school range - from foundation to year 6 - to support them through loss and I have engaged in several sessions with them through the use of this book. This book has helped them through the difficult time of grieving and helped them to deal with their emotions. I would definitely recommend this book and I believe that all schools should have a copy to support children if they sadly lose someone close to them.
July 29, 2015
No doubt about it, sometimes life just plain stinks.
Everybody develops their own coping mechanisms with unavoidable tragedies and bereavement, but for some children, if it is their first time dealing with such a situation, they have no previous experience of how to process it and the emotional consequences can be overwhelming.
Fortunately, Diana Crossley has designed this activity book to support the grieving process for young children when somebody close to them passes away. The activities start with a letter and provides space to include photographs of the person. By encouraging the reader to outline a day in their life with memories, open questions are used strategically for the child to answer in order to help identify and address their emotions. Throughout the book, constant reinforcement is given that it is okay to remember loved ones by lighting candles and recording special memories and shared hobbies. A double page spread is dedicated to preparation and discussion of the funeral arrangements, whether the reader attended or not, to help them understand the purpose of such occassions and ceremonies. Activities such as baking biscuits with ‘feeling faces’ in the form of animals is a good form of expression for young children to release their own feelings about the circumstances and can be used to see how they are coping. Finally, the reader is guided towards the future, with space to write about things that have gone wrong since the bereavement. Ideas such as collecting a ‘Jar of Memories‘ and writing a letter to the loved one to say hello again. At the end of the book, the child is asked what they would want to do if they have 5 more minutes with the person who died, before reading about how to say goodbye as a form of closure.
This is an unavoidable part of life that many teachers and their students will have to address at some point. Bibliotherapy is a useful literary device in the form of expressive therapy and can help support the reader through tough times if they would prefer to address their feelings privately in a book, rather than be shared with others.
In the classroom, the book can be introduced and activities after consultation and good communication with parents and caregivers regarding how the situation is being managed at home. In order to support the child and allow them to open up about something very private, personal and emotional, this has to be done in a 1:1 situation where they can assured of your undivided attention.
Ideally, this book should never be taken off the bookshelf. However, it has a purpose to serve if needed and does so sensitively and effectively.
Everybody develops their own coping mechanisms with unavoidable tragedies and bereavement, but for some children, if it is their first time dealing with such a situation, they have no previous experience of how to process it and the emotional consequences can be overwhelming.
Fortunately, Diana Crossley has designed this activity book to support the grieving process for young children when somebody close to them passes away. The activities start with a letter and provides space to include photographs of the person. By encouraging the reader to outline a day in their life with memories, open questions are used strategically for the child to answer in order to help identify and address their emotions. Throughout the book, constant reinforcement is given that it is okay to remember loved ones by lighting candles and recording special memories and shared hobbies. A double page spread is dedicated to preparation and discussion of the funeral arrangements, whether the reader attended or not, to help them understand the purpose of such occassions and ceremonies. Activities such as baking biscuits with ‘feeling faces’ in the form of animals is a good form of expression for young children to release their own feelings about the circumstances and can be used to see how they are coping. Finally, the reader is guided towards the future, with space to write about things that have gone wrong since the bereavement. Ideas such as collecting a ‘Jar of Memories‘ and writing a letter to the loved one to say hello again. At the end of the book, the child is asked what they would want to do if they have 5 more minutes with the person who died, before reading about how to say goodbye as a form of closure.
This is an unavoidable part of life that many teachers and their students will have to address at some point. Bibliotherapy is a useful literary device in the form of expressive therapy and can help support the reader through tough times if they would prefer to address their feelings privately in a book, rather than be shared with others.
In the classroom, the book can be introduced and activities after consultation and good communication with parents and caregivers regarding how the situation is being managed at home. In order to support the child and allow them to open up about something very private, personal and emotional, this has to be done in a 1:1 situation where they can assured of your undivided attention.
Ideally, this book should never be taken off the bookshelf. However, it has a purpose to serve if needed and does so sensitively and effectively.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews