Billy Bully & The Character Critters

As I plan today for my preK classes to come to see me tomorrow, I'm so eager to share what I'm thinking about for them. Since our focus this month is respect, I figured we'd go with a bully-prevention strategy lesson, 
but how do I do that effectively with fours and fives? 

Enter Billy Bully by Alvaro and Ana Galan. 

In this school-yard counting tale, Billy loses his friends one by one because of his bullying behaviors. Here's the cool part ... I have a puppet or stuffed animal for each one of the characters in the book that he's mean to. Yay!

So what I'll do is get volunteers to be these characters and we'll act out the book together. As Billy interacts with these critters, each one ends up going away when he overpowers them. Because of his behaviors, Billy no longer has anyone to play with. After a brief discussion about what they'd do if they were in Billy's shoes, we'll have them come back one by one and bring the book to life as Billy makes amends for the way he's acted and regains their friendship and trust. I cannot wait to see how it goes!

The older students will also practice the concept of swarm, a safety strategy to encourage bystanders to become upstanders. We'll play out Billy's scenario to see what might have happened had some friends intervened by swarming the friend while it was in harm's way 
and getting it out of the situation.

Using the R-I-P formula, we'll also answer the question:
Is Billy really a Bully?

Were his actions Repeated?

Were his actions Intentional?

Did he create an imbalance of Power?

If we can answer yes to all of these, 
then by school policy it would be labeled bullying. 
Do I have a great job or what?