Fish Philosophy & FREEBIE

Have you heard of the Fish Philosophy? A couple years ago, through one of my previous principals, I was introduced to this concept. It comes from Seattle's Pike Place Fish Market. I have been there years ago, and remembered the fun the fish mongers had there. It brought smiles to us visiting to see them smiling big and having fun. The Fish Philosophy was reintroduced through a conversation with someone recently. So I thought I would see if I could find the video I saw 3 years ago. Here is a preview for it... I didn't realize the program actually cost so much money!

 



 

The Fish Philosophy is basically composed of 4 concepts.

 

1. Play

2. Make Their Day

3. Be There

4. Choose Your Attitude

 

This philosophy is something that can be used in a workplace, in a classroom, and in our everyday world. The first one, play, is all about having fun. It is important for us to laugh and smile. That's part of building the positive social-emotional classroom environment. Making their day is how we make others feel. Do we make others around us feel good? Do they want to come back? Being there is being in the moment. Am I really hearing what someone is telling me? Am I connecting? Choosing your attitude is something I have to do daily. Is it a positive perspective? It is easy sometimes for some to get a negative nagging attitude. Am I feeding into that or am I keeping it real?

 

In my classroom, I think the easiest is to be there. My kinders are living in the moment, and I happen to do that so easily with them. However, outside my classroom, when I am at a meeting or conversing with grown ups, I find this to be more difficult. There are many distractors in our world- cell phones, other people, my thoughts, etc. I think the most challenging concept is make their day for my kinders. At 5 years old, they can be egocentric individuals. I saw some other bloggers were planning to do Acts of Kindness jars in their classrooms. I think this may be a fun way to incorporate making their day concept to my kinders.

 

Here are some fish books that I think I may also use to introduce these concepts.

 

1. Play- One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish or play Go Fish

 

2. Make Their Day- The Rainbow Fish

 

3. Be There- Big Al or Swimmy

 

4. Choose Your Attitude- The Pout-Pout Fish or Fish is Fish

 

I've created some fish posters with these concepts on them. I plan to introduce and use them as bubble maps to discuss with my new class at how we can use these concepts into our classroom.

 

Click here to get the fish posters for FREE at my TPT store.

 

Have you used the Fish Philosophy in your classroom? Does it make you ponder how you effect others? Please share your thoughts as I have not used this particular concept in my classroom. I'm still using the Filling Buckets system, but thought this might be a way to dig a little deeper with my kinders.