At this age, many children are still figuring out what “grumpy” really means. They can recognize the mood—they feel it, they see it—but they don’t always have the vocabulary or emotional awareness to name it in themselves. That’s what makes Jim such a lovable and relatable character. The children have no trouble spotting his grumpiness, and they absolutely delight in the fact that he keeps denying it. It’s funny, it’s honest, and if we’re being real… it feels pretty familiar to us adults too. (I’m definitely raising my hand here!)
Meet Jim Panzee.
We talked about what hunched means, and we tried to loosen up our own arms.
We had fun finding our vocabulary word not once but twice. Some even realized it rhymed with hunched.
We bunched up our eyebrows too.
And tried to raise them.
We laughed at Jim’s fake smile.
And tried on our own.
We enjoyed watching Norman do all of the things Jim did not want to do. We also enjoyed naming all of the animal we saw.
But, this was our favorite part.
We beat our chests and shouted too!
We had to talk a little about porcupines and what a porcupine quill is. (And we found our vocabulary word again!)
Poor Norman. Look at all the bandaids.
At the end of the story, we took time to talk about all of our feelings. Sometimes we just need to feel grumpy, or sad, or mad—and that’s okay. The good news is that when we allow those feelings to come and go, they usually don’t last very long.
The most important message I hope children take away is this: all emotions are okay. We are human, and having feelings is part of that. What matters most is helping children understand that emotions pass, and gently guiding them so they don’t hold on to those feelings longer than they need to.
Is it Jim and Norman on the projector?
We explored emotions during my after school classes.
Print here:
We also made these cute little monkeys.
We wondered if our monkeys were grumpy or not. Would they sing like a bird? Swing like a monkey?
Print and play here:
We ran out of time to work on this, so the children took it home for “homework”.
Berto and Bananas approve of this book.
Find more ideas to go with this story here: