Category: Bring in the Arts
-
Preventing Conflict Activity: Name Calling Hurts
You probably think name calling is something only children do. After all, name calling is one of the most common ways that conflict starts between children, especially on the playground out of the eye of the teacher. What child hasn’t been called a name? However, name calling doesn’t end on the playground. It pervades our…
-
Activity: Identifying Conflict and Resolution in Children’s Books
Before you can solve a conflict, you have to recognize not only that there is a conflict, but also what type of conflict it is. Violent conflict is obvious. But sometimes the most pervasive and most difficult to see are conflicts are those that lie below the surface. The same thing is true of the…
-
What Color is Your Skin? Choosing Color Names
Have you ever tried to describe the color of your skin? For fiction writers, especially those writing multicultural books and those for children, coming up with color names to describe skin is an ongoing challenge. Coming up with color names for skin often crops up with children’s lessons on racism and in literature classes, too. A teacher,…
-
Talking About Skin Color: All the Colors We Are
All the Colors We Are by Katie Kissinger is a bilingual English-Spanish picture book intended for very young children. Amply illustrated with delightful photographs of children, adults, and families, this book explains in simple language why people have different color skin. Every child should be read this book. And while preschool is the place to…
-
Making Peace Journals: A Teach Peace Now Activity for All Ages
There is no time left for anything but to make peacework a dimension of our every waking activity.— Elise Boulding Lesson: Peace Journals Objective: To become aware of the role each one of us plays in creating a peaceful world and to record one’s thoughts about it. Peace journals can be kept by everyone. This is…
-
I Got to Know – A Guthrie Song that Says It All
American songwriter, Woody Guthrie, was born in 1912 in Oklahoma. His songs documented the trials of the dust bowl years and the depression, the labor movement and the anti-war movement. His most well-known song is This Land is Your Land has been sung by millions. However, the following song I Got To Know deserve as much recognition.…
-
What Does Peace Feel Like?
What Does Peace Feel Like to You? The United Nations has defined war as any conflict in which there are more than 1000 battlefield dead. It is estimated that currently there are eleven wars going on around the world and many, many more “conflicts.” However, as the following quote tells us, war is not limited…
-
Poems & Quotes for Peace Lesson Plan: Let’s talk peace!
Poems & Quotes for Peace Lesson Plan This lesson is based on a contribution by Christine Pescatore Objective: To develop an understanding of peace and social injustice through the reading and discussion of poems and quotes. Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School and High School Procedure: Share these selection of poems focusing on peace and justice with your students…
-
Peace Tales Lesson Plan: Using folktales to talk about peace
PEACE TALES LESSON: WORLD FOLKTALES TO TALK ABOUT Objective: To introduce culturally different ways of thinking about peace and demonstrate ways people can make a difference. Grade level: Kindergarten and up Peace Tales is a marvelous collection of short folktales by Margaret Reed MacDonald, focusing on peace, collected from all over the world. The tales…
-
Inspiration from the Art of JahSun
Yelling and profanity burst our joyous family union like a needle stabbing a balloon. What was once a warm, inter-generational breakfast became a cauldron of fury and recrimination. Months passed until forgiveness and apology began the process of healing. A careless comment from my spouse hurt, but letting it go became the balm to…
-
Searching for Peace, Once Again
Soon before the beginning of the current school year, Bob Graves, the Maine-Endwell High School Spartan Theater Company Director, was asked what they were going to present in 2015-2016. “Would it be another musical or a tragedy?” The questioner (which was not me) went on, “I really liked when you produced those little plays about…