Teach global awareness of poverty, war, pollution, sustainability for World Month

Hello my friends of the Omschool. April is Earth Month and this year I'm thinking of it as World Month too. With terrible wars in Ukraine, Palestine and now the US in Iran, our earth and the people who live on it, face devasting circumstances and consequences of the circumstances. Consequences that will not go away when the guns are silent. I just watched a documentary on Fleury-devant-Douaumont, one of many "ghost cities" obliterated in WW1 in battles such as the Somme, Ypres and Verdun. It is a cemetery and the ground is too toxic ever to rebuild anyway. These cities bear the distinction "mort pour Le France (died for France). There are countless others around the world, from countless wars, disasters, impoverishment, disease, all man-made, destroyed or with lasting, extensive damage. Pripyat, Biafra, Hiroshima, Chechnya, Warsaw, Carthage, Nagasaki, Aleppo, Gallipoli, Lebanon, Palestine the list goes on. 

And it's not just war that injures and kills. Exploitation of natural resources by consumer driven societies do just as much harm. In many industrialized 'first world' countries, we live in insular communities which have little or no contact with global issues. So we think it doesn't affect us. We think wrong. 

We consume grotesque quantities of natural resources. We use goods wantonly, we burn vast amounts of fossil fuels every second. We let good clean water run down the drain endlessly. We cram miles of good fertile land with plastic, paper, yard waste, glass, metal. We pay billions of dollars to watch idiots and buffoons entertain us. We are a glutted society, drowning in our own waste. There are beaches in China that appear sandy but are in fact composed entirely of microplastic from global waste. There's a trash island TWICE the size of Texas and growing, called GPGP (the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) floating in the Pacific ocean. 

So what's the point of this discouraging review? That all is not lost. We have a generation of citizens who are forced to sit in our schools every day listening to talk on all sorts of subjects. What if we were to bring this captive audience global awareness of the world around them?  Not just latitude and "name the capital of Tibet" and drawing maps. I'm talking real lessons about real people around the world, 3/4 of which live below the poverty level.

Obviously we can't end the suffering. But we can raise global awareness to the plight of poverty, illness, starvation, lack of literacy and dreadful environmental issues, much of the world lives with. I have interacted with hundreds of students of all ages and I have rarely found any so hard-hearted that they did not show concern when presented with the face of poverty, hunger, disease and want. Knowledge is power and we can empower this generation to go and make a difference in whatever way is right for them. Perhaps a student will join the Peace Corps, write a news expose that touches the public, find a cure for illness, sponsor a child, who knows?

So how do we raise awareness? Here are some websites with resources to educate and inspire students on the needs of the world.

Greater Good. You'll find all sorts of teaching resources for geography, science, demographics, culture and reading. There are map activities, lesson plans, literature links, and more. There are web pages on rain forests, global health care and literacy also. Each link has teacher resources and lesson plans to help students understand the factors contributing to poverty. There are lessons on climate, harvest, natural disasters, politics, disease prevention, vitamin and nutrition deficiencies, dehydration, land mines and disease in general. The rain forest page lists science lessons on water and water shortages, biome and habitat health, symbiosis, etc. The literacy link shows ways to improve literacy, communication and interaction.

World Health Organization Search this informative site for ways to improve and explore health. You'll find statistics, charts, graphs that can be useful in math and science also.

UNICEF The United Nations developed UNICEF (UN Children's Fund) to bring resources to nation's in need. It's primary focus is on children. Click this link to find out more about what educators and students and do to help or be informed.

Peace Corps This site is filled with lesson plans and teacher resources all about global issues. You'll find many lessons for grades 3-12. There are lessons in many different world regions. There are language, literature, environment, health, cross-culture, social studies, geography, service learning and more.

TheWorldWar has free printable World War One resources to teach students about the scope of this "war to end all wars." If only...

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial site, has a wealth of lesson plans to help students begin to conceptualize the horror of genocide. I find the Hall of Names and their personal stories on YouTube Yad Vashem the most profound. Especially the children. 

Let's bring about some real global awareness of issues that affect us, our world and our neighbors in it.

Free Printable Mo Willems Lesson Plans--Activities using Knuffle Bunny and Pigeon books

 Hello my friends of the Omschool! So I have 13--count them! grandchildren and one of the, a little lad named Emmett, loves any and all Mo Willems books, particularly the ones featuring that bombastic pigeon! Most famously of "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!" I just read them all "Duckling Gets a Cookie?!" and it was loved as well. Here are some free printable Mo Willems lesson plans for you to use in preschool or early elementary. 

Read "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" with "wiginal voices." This was our youngest daughter's way of saying, give all the characters their own voices. This brings them to life. Next 

Read with audience participation. Emmett loves anticipating recognized phrases and joining in. So does his little sister Flora who has learned from listening to him. I love how children teach each other vital reading and listening skills by reading and listening. 

Color Mo Willems' character coloring pages. In the pigeon books there's only one to a few characters, such as Duckling and pigeon. Other books feature Elephant & Piggie (click  here for free printable Elephant & Piggie lesson plans). There's also the Caldecott winner, Knuffle Bunny (click for free printable Knuffle Bunny coloring pages) and Trixie. Use these coloring pages to keep students on track listening to the story. 

Create masks or puppets for characters. The good news is that Mo Willems' drawings are so easy to copy that kids can make reasonable facsimiles with just a little tracing. Use lightweight tracing paper to get the basic face or shape of the character then transfer the image to lightweight cardboard or tagboard. Blank insides of recycled cereal boxes are the perfect puppet-making and mask-making media. 

Go on a Pigeon Hunt (or Knuffle Bunny Hunt). I got this idea from the Muskegon Museum of Art's Mo Willems exhibit. They hid little cut and paste images of Pigeon around the museum and children received a clipboard with a map of locations in which Pigeon might be hiding. Emmett's and Flora's big brother Henry and cousin Milo had a fan-Pigeon-tastic time hunting up that rascally bird. To recreate, have students cut pictures of Pigeon or Knuffle Bunny and hide images in various locations. 

Play a Worst Case Scenario or What if? game. We got to discussing why Pigeon can't drive the bus and none of us could think why. Have children predict or imagine situations in which Pigeon driving would be a bad thing. 

Play CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) game. In Duckling Gets a Cookie?! evaluate choices both made, using CBT, to determine why Duckling did and Pigeon did not (get a cookie). Discuss what Pigeon could do differently. 

Make Pigeon cookies (with nuts and without) and have a Pigeon Party! Make small cookie-sized tracings of Pigeon. on parchment paper, using the method described above. Cut out images. Make blue sugar cookie dough (or white and frost with blue frosting). Roll out dough and "trace" pigeon images on cookie dough. Bake but watch for browning. You could make Knuffle Bunny and Elephant & Piggie cookies with gray and pink cookie dough. All Mo Willems images are very easy to recreate.