When we compare one experience with another, we are noting the similarities between those two experiences: These two roller coasters are similar in these ways.
When we contrast one experience with another, we pay attention to all the differences between the two experiences: These coasters are different in these ways.
The activity I want your kids to try today is to compare and contrast two ways a person might react to an experience they select. Let’s say your child really loves skateboarding. Have them make a list of all the aspects of skating that they love: the speed, the tricks, the way they get to design and put decals on the board, the skating community, the local skate park.
Now, ask them to enter their imaginations to magically create a person who might not like skateboarding.
What would that person be like?
How old? What kinds of life experience?
What reasons might that person give for not liking skateboarding?
They can try first pretend to be an adult who doesn’t like skating. They might pretend to think the way a kid their own age might explain their fear of skating or why they don’t enjoy it.
Once they’ve tried to figure out how someone else could take the very experience they love and see it differently, they’ve learned about “contrast”—contrasting one person’s experience with another person’s.
They can try this going the other way.
Start with something they don’t like—maybe a TV show—and now imagine someone who might like it.
What would they say that would contrast with what you think of the show?
What would be reasons they would cite that justify not liking the show?
Once your kids have tried this with made up humans, remind them of this experience the next time a sibling or friend holds a different opinion than they do!
