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Teaching
Activities
Discussions and Projects based on Elisa Kleven's Books |
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YOUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE John Muir, a man
who loved, studied, and worked to conserve nature, said "Whenever
we try to isolate anything in the universe, we find that it's hitched
up to everything else." Like the deer in the story who can't dance apart from her home in the forest by the sea, each one of us is "hitched up", or connected, to everything else in our environment. Imagine life without the sun which warms us, the earth which gives us food, the rain clouds, oceans, forests, people and animals which support us in all sorts of ways. Like the deer, we're all part of an infinite web of life. What are the ways that you are connected to the universe? (In ten words or less -- just kidding! I'm sure the ways are endless.) Draw a picture of where you are in your world.
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What
if Ernst got a spaceship |
What
Ifs? ERNST. Ernst, the small blue crocodile, is always wondering "what if". ("What if sand were fudgy instead of sandy?" "What if my birthday came every day?" ) What are some of your own "what ifs?" Try collecting them into your own "What-If Book" and making pictures to illustrate them. You might even want to expand one of your "what-ifs" into a story. Just about all stories, after all, start out as "what-ifs" in the author's mind. Examples: "What if there were a boy named Harry Potter who was really a powerful wizard?" "What if there were a spider named Charlotte who saved a pig by writing messages in her web?" "What if there were a grandma called 'Abuela' who flew over New York City with a girl named Rosalba?" |
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Animal
Friends and Collage ![]()
Trash & Treasure - our many selves THE PAPER PRINCESS. The paper princess is many things to many people -- and other creatures. To the little girl who made her she is, of course, a princess and a work of art to be proud of , "the best thing I've ever made." To the little girl who finds her on the playground she is just "a paper doll", and an object she throws away after mistakenly drawing green hair on it. To the the bird who finds the princess in the trash can, she is "a fat wad of paper", a handy piece of material she'd like to weave into her nest. To the little boy in the meadow, the princess becomes a piece of blank paper on which to draw a birthday card. Once she is returned to the girl who made her, the princess becomes a beloved "princess" once again! You are many things to many people, too. To your parents you are a daughter or a son. To your sibling(s) you are a sister or a brother. To your teacher you are a student; to your grandparents you are a grandchild; to your friends you are a friend. All of these various "people" add up to one special you! What other "people" live inside you? Objects can take on many uses and "new lives", too. In my daughter's hands, ordinary shoe boxes become houses for dolls and teddy bears. What can you do with a box? Make it into a chair or a table, perhaps? What else? What other objects can be many things to many people? |
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Imaginary
friends, and pinatas
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Make
Your Own Sun! "The
sun shines not on us but in us." --John Muir |
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Creating art, like baking bread, is another way of "making your own weather." Try painting a blizzardy scene on a hot summer day, or a blazing summer garden on a gray one. Or bake a sun bread of your own!
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Email Elisa at EKleven@aol.com Website designed
by Mira Reisberg miraguy@earthlink.net
All images and text copyright Elisa Kleven. Site last updated October 2006 by Andy Therrien |