The Perfect Plan

Name: The Perfect Plan
Author: Leah Gilbert

A story that explores cooperation and opens a conversation with your child.

★★★★★ Loved by families

Read the Guiding Questions Find this book →

♥ This book teaches: Cooperation. choosing the group over the self.

Before, During & After Reading

Guiding Questions for Parents.

Definition of Cooperation for 4 - 7 year olds: Cooperation happens when two or more people help each other to make something good happen. It can also apply to animals or parts of a whole that need each other and work together. An example of this is the human body – all the parts work together to make you healthy. In a nutshell: Together we can do more. Summary: Maya has a plan to create a super tree fort. She designs her fort on paper, finds a location, goes straight to work, but finds that it’s more difficult than she thought. On the verge of giving up, she decides to ask the forest animals for help. Each animal offers its expertise and together they create a weather-proof, perfect fort. Lesson Objectives:

Students talk about situations in which they find it difficult to do something by themselves, and how much better and more fun it is to accomplish a task together.
Students will be more willing to ask for help when they need it.

Guiding Questions:

Why did Maya dream about having a fort?
What did she do to get ready for building a fort?
What happened when she tried to accomplish her dream by herself?
She almost gave up but then had an idea - what was it?
What did the beavers do?
What did the moose do?
What did the bear do?
Have you ever built a fort? If so, what happened?
If you could use anything at all, what materials would you use to make a fort, and who would help you?
Talk about a time when you made something with others - was it fun to cooperate, was it hard?

🌿 Virtue Connection: Cooperation means choosing to contribute to something larger than yourself.

About the Story.

This guide is part of the Values & Virtues library, a free collection of 400+ book guides and activities organized around 12 core virtues for children from pre-K to 6th grade. Each guide includes Guiding Questions designed to open a real conversation with your child in 10 minutes or less.