We Don't Eat Our Classmates

The take

Funny and memorable way to talk about empathy, school behavior, and social boundaries. Kids usually love the humor. Caveat: some children focus more on the joke than the social lesson without discussion.

Discovery context

Use before school transitions; ask one short question about how Penelope understood her classmates at the end.

Why we recommend it

The premise — a dinosaur who wants to eat her classmates — gives kids permission to find school anxiety funny rather than scary. The empathy realization arrives when Penelope gets bitten by the goldfish and understands how her classmates felt. That cause-effect empathy sequence (do the thing, feel the thing, understand why you shouldn't) is more effective than told-you-so framing.