Thoughts for the Week:

Talking about "then" and "now" can help children think about all the ways they've grown and what they were like when they were younger. The day-by-day growing that children experience often goes unnoticed, unless we take the chance to help children see all the inside and outside ways they've grown.

Conversations about things that happened a while ago can also open the way for talking about losses that children may have experienced, such as the death of a pet or someone they knew. Such conversations give us a chance to help children begin to understand one of the most difficult facts of life - that all living things die. It's a fact that remains hard for many of us to face, no matter how old we are. When a pet dies, the understanding of what death means will come only little by little - as will a child's readiness to accept a replacement. Children need a lot of help understanding death, and, like all of us, need time to grieve.

Summary of the Week:

"Will my toy truck ever die?" " When will I get to be a baby again?" "If I walk backward, will I get to yesterday?" These questions let us know how much children struggle to make sense of the world -- especially time, growing and death. In this week of programs, Mister Rogers helps viewers with these concepts through a trip to the past in Colonial Williamsburg, a visit with violinist Itzhak Perlman who speaks about his past and his disability from childhood polio, and Mr. McFeely's discovery of a dead bird.

In the Neighborhood of Make-Believe Daniel Tiger is worried that his toy truck might die, until he comes to understand that only living things die and that our good feelings come from living life day by day.