I spent the morning after "Earth Day" at the public library, having helped organised a storytelling session with the Basadours (a local advocacy group for reading). We expected 30 children.... more than 50 of various ages (from 5 to 11) came. Hey, no one's complaining here. The more, the merrier (and noiser!).lol
We started off with a motivating activity to get the children into the session. Since we had a projector up, we played a trivia game of Amazing Earth Facts. The original version, which is in a Jeopardy game format, can be found here. My edited version is shorter (and just plain Q & A). I added pictures and facts about the correct answer. It can be found here.
We went on to tell the story of "The Lorax". It is such a gorgeous book and I think it should be part of every teachers personal library, especially those who are advocates for the environment and want their students to be environmentally-conscious as well. I have to say though, that the older children responded better to the book than the young ones. I had a few one my 5 and 6 year olds wiggle and jiggle through the story!
The highlight of the morning, though, was when we made our pledges to the environment. We divided the children in to small groups and had different volunteers lead the groups. We talked about the story first and then gave each child a leaf. On the leaf, they had to write or draw a promise to the environment- something the would do to "speak for the trees". After they finished, we called them to the big group once again and showed them the tree I had cut out of a box the night before. This tree looked dead and bare without its leaves, but as the children came up and made their pledges to take care of the environment by sticking the leaves on the branches, the tree grew and came to life once again.
We ended the morning by giving children certificates of appreciation which you can find here. The certificate has the groups' logo on it, but you can use photo editing tools to make it your own.
Here are some pictures of what we got up to:
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