Dear Children of the Earth written by Schim Schimmel is a beautiful picture book with paintings of creatures from around the world, such as white tigers. Intermixed within these animal paintings are pictures of the Earth and a letter addressed to the "Children of the Earth."
The paragraphs of the letter are intermixed on each page with the various animal and earth pictures. The letter asks kids to respect the environment and why, in very generic terms, environmental preservation is important to children.
I enjoy reading this book aloud to my students. They enjoy not only the beautiful illustrations, but also, the text of the story allows them to begin thinking critically about the world around them and their responsibilities.
After reading this book as a class, we have a large group discussion about why the environment is important, what students are currently doing to help the environment and ideas about future environmental activities. I then put students into small groups to brainstorm ways to make the environment better. We then come back as a group and everyone shares at least one idea that is put up on the board. I then ask students to take out a sheet of paper and to write down the five ideas that they like the best.
As a group we then discuss that in a democracy, we can contact our leaders about our ideas and ask them to help. We discuss who we can contact to help us with our ideas and on the board I draw out a matrix of local, state, and national government leaders who could help us with our ideas. Depending on my class and grade-level, we either decide which one leader to contact or each student can decide who to contact.
From past experiences I have learned that students as young as eight-years old watch television and listen to adults enough to have fairly strong political opinions or, at the least, understand somewhat was is happening with their local and national leaders. This can be a wonderful teaching opportunity to discuss how politics works without getting onto a soapbox. It can also become a minefield for an instructor. For example, during the Clinton-Lewinsky issue, I taught this lesson. When we discussed whom we could contact, my third-grade students had very strong opinions about the generalities of what happened. They did not know the details but they understood that former President Clinton had lied under oath. Several of my students were adamant about not writing to him because he had lied.
The paragraphs of the letter are intermixed on each page with the various animal and earth pictures. The letter asks kids to respect the environment and why, in very generic terms, environmental preservation is important to children.
I enjoy reading this book aloud to my students. They enjoy not only the beautiful illustrations, but also, the text of the story allows them to begin thinking critically about the world around them and their responsibilities.
After reading this book as a class, we have a large group discussion about why the environment is important, what students are currently doing to help the environment and ideas about future environmental activities. I then put students into small groups to brainstorm ways to make the environment better. We then come back as a group and everyone shares at least one idea that is put up on the board. I then ask students to take out a sheet of paper and to write down the five ideas that they like the best.
As a group we then discuss that in a democracy, we can contact our leaders about our ideas and ask them to help. We discuss who we can contact to help us with our ideas and on the board I draw out a matrix of local, state, and national government leaders who could help us with our ideas. Depending on my class and grade-level, we either decide which one leader to contact or each student can decide who to contact.
From past experiences I have learned that students as young as eight-years old watch television and listen to adults enough to have fairly strong political opinions or, at the least, understand somewhat was is happening with their local and national leaders. This can be a wonderful teaching opportunity to discuss how politics works without getting onto a soapbox. It can also become a minefield for an instructor. For example, during the Clinton-Lewinsky issue, I taught this lesson. When we discussed whom we could contact, my third-grade students had very strong opinions about the generalities of what happened. They did not know the details but they understood that former President Clinton had lied under oath. Several of my students were adamant about not writing to him because he had lied.
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