Say It PROUD: Self-Awareness, Ren's Three Words, and Books 10, 12, and 20

Kit has a working invention with a real name, and when it is time to show it at the playground he says it so small that nobody turns around. A big kid laughs, and Kit hides under the slide. Ren finds him there and says it plain: "YOU made that. Say it PROUD." Kit whispers, "I made that." Ren shakes his head. "Louder." That scene is the middle of Book 10, and it is a self-awareness lesson with no vocabulary in it.

Where the topic comes from

The 2024 California Preschool/TK Learning Foundations open the Social and Emotional Development domain with a strand called Self, and its first sub-strand is Self-Awareness: the child's growing sense of who they are, what they can do, and what belongs to them. CASEL's framework, the one most social-emotional curricula are built on, lists Self-Awareness as the first of its five competencies. Two documents, same starting point: before a child can regulate, share, or collaborate, they need a working answer to "what did I do?"

Three books, one sentence

Book 10: Kit Says "I Made That!" is the sentence itself. Whisper, louder, LOUDER, and then Kit shouts it from the top of the climbing frame and the whole playground cheers. Then a second beat that matters more: the big kid comes back, quieter now, and says he wants to say he made it. Ren is not angry. He is clear. "That one is Kit's. Kit made it." And Kit adds, "You can make YOUR own thing." The big kid goes off and does, and comes back with a box that has one wheel. Self-awareness includes knowing what is not yours.

Book 12: Kit's Special Stamp turns the sentence into a mark. Someone makes a cup that looks like the Steady Sippy, and people get confused. Josie puts a star on everything she makes, then holds up two paper hats, one with stars, and asks "Which one did I make?" Easy. Kit draws his own mark, a gear, and from then on the real one is easy to spot. A four-year-old who has a mark has a way to say "I made that" without saying anything.

Book 20: Kit's Promise is where the sentence becomes an identity. Kit gets Mia's kite down off the roof with a pole he built himself, and afterward Sparks unrolls a golden paper of seven pictures of what he did that afternoon, each one labeled I will: look, feel, draw, build, try, share, help. Kit writes the last line himself: I will never, ever stop asking WHAT IF? The subtitle carries the same promise: I will never stop wondering.

What you can do

• Run Ren's ladder once a day. Whisper it, say it, shout it. "I made that." Kids find the shout funny, and the funny is the point.
• Let the child pick a mark and put it on what they make. A star, a gear, a scribble. The mark does the talking on a shy day.
• When a sibling claims the tower, borrow Ren's line, and Kit's. "That one is Sam's. You can make your own." Then hand over blocks.

The educator guide for Book 12 runs a stamp table for four children at a time and asks the question the book leaves open: what shape feels like you?

More from Little Sparks: All 20 STEM picture books for toddlers and preschoolers | Free coloring pages for all 20 books

Sources

• California Department of Education, California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations: Social and Emotional Development (2024). Original PDF. Archived copy on littlesparksbooks.com (PDF), saved in case the original moves.
• CASEL, What Is the CASEL Framework? (the five competencies). casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/
• California Department of Education, California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations overview page (nine domains). www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/psfoundations.asp

Chris Kuczynski is an engineer turned registered patent attorney, a preschool co-founder, and a dad. He is the author of Kit's Little Sparks, a 20-book STEM series that gives children ages 2 to 4 the social and emotional foundations of the inventor's mindset. It is the first of four age-tiered series for readers ages 2 to 12.