Activity 6: Processing The Unfair Snack Activity
Activity time: 10 minutes
Description of Activity
It is important that children have an opportunity to talk about their feelings and process the justice issues that were raised in the unfair snack exercise. You can gather after the snack in a circle, or, if time is short, you can talk about the experience while eating the redistributed food.
Try to help participants think about the experience critically, process it emotionally and verbalize what they have learned. You may wish to use these questions:
- How did it feel to have too much food?
- How did it feel to have too little food?
- How did it feel to see your friends having a different amount than you?
- How did it feel to be the watchdog?
- In the end, was it fair?
- What did we do to make it fair that worked?
- Was there anything that didn't work?
- What other things might we have tried?
- If the people who had too much food had refused to share it, what could we have done? (Possible answers include having the rest of the children join the barking watchdogs, taking the food non-violently, appealing to the leaders to act on their behalf, eating less (not the desired outcome!), staging a protest, or assigning the selfish children the job of being watchdogs.)
Including All Participants
It is important to remember with this activity that there is likely to be economic disparity within the group, with the possibility of extreme disparity such as a particularly wealthy child alongside a child who is living below the poverty line. Be careful to avoid language that assumes one financial situation for all participants, such as "in our town we all have lots of food to eat."
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