The Learning Umbrella

We were lucky this summer to be contacted by a group that is putting together a large mural to promote peace in Palestine.  The art group brought in ceramic leaves and helped our kids paint them, and the leaves will be included in the mural, which takes the shape of a giant olive tree on the side of a building in our downtown area.

Painting the tiles was our Action for earning the Earth Scouts Badge “Peace and Non-Violence”.  Our Inspiration was to watch the video of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes.   The video is a reading of the book by Eleanor Coerr, with music by George Winston.  It is a slow-paced reading, and the illustrations are still the simple black-and-white drawings from the book.  Even at only 1/2 hour long, it seemed hard for the kids to sit through.  But this story is so very touching, and children can really relate to Sadako and her effort to survive “the atom bomb disease”.  After we watched the film, we had a discussion about it, and the kids wanted to know how radiation sickness works, why the bomb was dropped, and whether eating a lot of fruits and vegetables would help you get over radiation.  Because they had heard of antioxidants, even though they couldn’t remember that word.  Never assume kids don’t have some sort of weird previous knowledge!

After watching the film, we folded paper cranes, of course.  Cranes are not the easiest first origami project, but I don’t find them impossible to stumble through either.  All the kids over 6 years old were able to make a rough crane.  The littles ended up drawing pictures of cranes instead.

I also read them the lovely book about peace cranes, Peace Crane by Sheila Hamanaka. This short poem format book shows the idea that the peace crane has come to represent peace for children everywhere.  Also of note is the book Spread Your Wings and Fly: An Origami Fold and Tell Story which goes through the steps of folding a crane, with images and ideas for each fold that emphasize the ideas of possibility and hope.