“Doesn’t knowledge of the laws of nature hinder the fairy tale? No, quite the reverse, it facilitates the telling. The children understand quite well that a chunk of earth cannot become a living creature, just as they understand that there are no Giant Blacksmiths, no Baba-Yaga, and no Deathless Dragons. But if children didn’t have all these things, if they didn’t experience the struggle between good and evil, didn’t feel that truth, honor, and beauty are reflected in fairy tales, then their world would be crowded and uncomfortable.” (To Children p. 111)

Sukhomlinsky saturated his young students in make believe. He taught that this was where children can work through and learn about the heavy things that life can and does bring.

“What is neglected in childhood is never compensated for in years of adulthood. This rule is applicable to all the spheres of the inner life of the child, and especially to aesthetic education. Sensitivity and reciprocity to beauty in the years of childhood is incomparably more profound than in the later periods of personality development. One of the main tasks of the elementary school teacher is cultivating in the children a need for the beautiful, which in many ways determines the entire system of the inner life of the child and its relation to the collective.The need for the beautiful fosters moral beauty and intolerance of banality and ugliness.”

His students learned about empathy and sensitivity to the plight of other students and to their families by being allowed to know what was happening and taught what kinds of things could be helpful to them. One year, a student’s brother was killed in a terrible accident. The children planted a tree in his honor and named a part of the school after him. The made a memorial book for his mother. This was all done without fanfare or need for praise.

Children spend many hours in school and it is there that the lessons we parents are trying to teach our children can be focused on and solidified. This can be done through stories, helping others, reading, writing, listening to and making music, and speaking frankly about goodness.