Activity #1
Grades K–2
Super Helpers
Super Helper Hints!
Sometimes in a busy school day it’s hard to remember what a big difference a
small act of helping or caring can make. Encourage your children to practice
simple ways of lending a hand with a Super Helpers Hints Container.
Decorate a basket, box, or coffee tin and label it as your Super Helpers Hints
Container. Fill it with the Super Helpers Cards (Reproducible).
Every morning invite the children to pick a card from the container. Explain
to children that they should keep the instruction on their card private, but
that they should try to do what it says at least once during the day. Younger
children may need to have the cards read to them while older children can use
it as an opportunity to practice reading skills.
At the end of the day, invite children to share their feelings about being
Super Helpers: Ask them how they felt about being responsible citizens. If they
helped someone else, ask them how the person they helped responded. Ask
how helping felt. Older children may want to write about their experiences in
their journals.
You may want to do this activity every day for a week, once a week, or
occasionally. The more regularly you do it, however, the more you help
children make lending a hand a habit!
Either before the project or after, you may want to read Miss Rumphius, by
Barbara Cooney, with your class. It’s the story of a lady who came up with a
beautiful and creative way to show her community she cared.
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Pick up trash and throw it away.
Compliment someone.
Play with someone new at recess.
Share a book with someone.
Smile at someone.
Help someone who needs help.
Laugh with someone.
Say something nice to a grown-up.
Say something nice to a classmate.
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Activity #2
Color My World!
Grades K–2
Take your class on a tour around the world—with a box of crayons and a map!
Familiarizing children with the shapes of continents and oceans will help them
with geography in the upper grades, and it is a special way to help them
practice their colors.
Display a large map at the front of the classroom. You may also want to
distribute globes and atlases, if you have them, to groups of students.
Together notice all the blue areas. Explain to the children that this is where
the water is on a map. The biggest blue areas are oceans, but you may also
want to point out large lakes and rivers. Have the children color the water on
their reproducible world maps blue.
Depending on the age and ability of your students, you can either have
them simply color the land masses a particular color or help them to find and
recognize the continents and the United States. You can have them color each
of the continents a different color.
Where do you live? Locate your town on the world map with a special
sticker or color!
You may also want to recognize and mark other locations—where children
have family or friends, where they were born, or where they want to visit
someday!
Display children’s maps on the bulletin board or keep them on your desk as a
handy reference. When you learn about a new country or place, have them
mark it on their maps with a new sticker!
Some special books to help your children get to know their planet include
The Colors of Us; Hello Kitty ®, Hello World; The Earth and I; Our Earth; and The
Scholastic Atlas of the World.
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Color My World
Activity #3
Grades K–2
Hands Across the Water
The khamsa, an open-faced hand, is a symbol of protection and peace that
comes from the north of Africa. Many people put such a sign above their
doors and some people even wear khamsa designs on necklaces. Often
khamsa are inscribed with prayers and wishes.
1. After reading and learning about life in Africa, your children can create
their own khamsa designs and inscribe them with their hopes and wishes for
the children of Africa. (Recommended books include Beatrice’s Goat, Off to
the Sweet Shores of Africa and Other Talking Drum Rhymes, and I Lost My
Tooth in Africa.)
2. Have children trace the outlines of their hands on a piece of thin
cardboard. Cut it out and cover it in aluminum foil.
3. N
ow glue a small square of lined paper to the hand.
Children can write their wishes on it. You may want to put
a sentence starter on the chalkboard: I hope that you . . .
4. Decorate your khamsas with glitter and stickers!
5. Now you can display them. You might want to create a bulletin board showing a cutout of the United States and one of Africa. The hands can stretch
all across the ocean from our land to theirs!
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Activity #4
Grades K–2
My Water, Your Water, Our Water
Water. We use it all day long for drinking and cleaning. Without it we couldn’t
live more than a few days. In the United States, it’s easy to take clean water
for granted, but in many places in the world, clean water is hard to obtain.
This activity can help you begin to talk about the lack of clean, safe water.
Ask children to imagine getting up in the morning. When do they first use
water? What do they use it for? Write their answers on the board and
encourage them to think carefully about their day. They need water for
brushing their teeth, drinking, bathing, flushing toilets, cleaning up, cooking,
etc.
Now ask the children if they know where their water comes from. Do they
know whether it comes from a well? A reservoir? (You may want to
investigate where your local water comes from before this conversation.)
What if they couldn’t turn on the faucet to get water? Where would they
get their water from? Think about local creeks, rivers, and streams. How far
away are they? How clean are they? Is the water safe to drink? Would they
like to bathe in it? What about at school? Where would you get your water
from if there were no faucet? How? Who would carry it? How much?
You may want to research and share stories about efforts to bring clean
water to communities around the world. Also, many places now have local
watersheds with people eager to come in and talk to children about how to
take care of local water supplies.
A great read-aloud story for older students is Mildred Taylor’s The Well.
Another useful resource is Water World: Children’s Voices, An Educational
Booklet on Water for Children (United Nations Environment Program, 2004).
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Activity #1
Born in the U.S.A.
Grades 3–6
What would it be like if you had not been born in the U.S.A? How would your
life be different? How would it be the same? This activity requires children
to research daily life for a child in a country in Africa and to imagine what it
would be like to live there.
Explain the project to children and assign to each of them a country in
Africa—Ghana, Morocco, South Africa, Nigeria, the Sudan, etc. Children may
either work in teams or individually.
You may want to have a large map of Africa in the classroom and have children
identify their countries on it. They could also create their own maps of their
countries showing important cities, bodies of water, and land features.
Pass out the reproducible research grid for the children to fill out. Together
as a class answer the first half of the grid. Talk about what life is like for most
children in America. How many meals do you have a day? What do you do for
fun? How often do you see a doctor? How many years do you go to school?
Now provide children with access to the Internet and library. Help them begin
to answer these questions for their particular African country.
When everyone has completed the research, the different teams can make
presentations about their findings, write a compare-and-contrast essay, or
write a story imagining themselves as a child in that country.
For older children, you may want to discuss what you as Americans could do
to help children in Africa.
An excellent chapter book that shows how a young girl adapts to life in two
different cultures (Mexico and America) is Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz
Ryan. The Royal Diaries: Nzingha, Warrior Queen of Matamba, Angola, Africa,
1595, by Newbery author Patricia McKissack, presents the story of a young
African princess protecting her people from invaders.
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Born in the U.S.A.
In the U.S.A.
In
What is my home like?
What is my home like?
What is my school like?
What is my school like?
What kind of food do I eat?
What kind of food do I eat?
How many meals do I have each day?
How many meals do I have each day?
What will I be when I grow up?
What will I be when I grow up?
What do I do for fun?
What do I do for fun?
When do I go to the doctor?
When do I go to the doctor?
What do I worry about?
What do I worry about?
How does the weather affect me?
How does the weather affect me?
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Activity #2
Grades 3–6
Connected to the World
Every day we connect to people around the globe. We eat chocolate made
from cocoa grown in Africa, eat apples from New Zealand, and wear sneakers
manufactured in Indonesia. This activity encourages your children to become
aware of their dependence on products from around the world.
Assign children the task of finding out where the food they eat comes from.
Many grocery stores now label the country of origin on produce or you can
ask the store manager or visit the store’s Web site.
You may also need to explain to children that while much food is processed in
America, the produce it is made with comes from somewhere else. Where does
the chocolate come from in their favorite candy bar? What about the orange
in their juice drink? You may need to do additional research online together
to find out this information.
Now have children research their clothes. Where were they made? Explain
to them that it will usually say on the inside label where the clothes were
fabricated.
Make a list of all the countries you are connected to through your food
and clothing. Use atlases and the Internet to find all the countries on your
class list.
For older students, you may want to investigate what it is like to work in a
clothing factory abroad or to grow food in a different country.
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Activity #3
Grades 3–6
Waking Up to Peace
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr tells the true story
of a young Japanese girl who tried to fold 1,000 origami cranes as a symbol
of peace before she died of the effects of radiation poisoning after World War
II. Because she was unable to complete her task alone, her classmates joined
in her project and created a peace movement that children around the world
participate in to this day.
Read the story Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes with your class.
Be sure to explain to your students that her gesture was not merely symbolic
but helped to bring an awareness of the long-term danger of nuclear
weapons to people around the world. This young girl made a difference that
continues more than 50 years after her death.
Talk about world events with your class. You may want to read a newspaper
or magazine specifically geared to children. Where would your students like to
see peace? What conflicts happening around the world upset them most? Of
what issue do they feel it would be important to bring a greater awareness to
their community?
In teams have the children talk about what they could do to raise awareness
of this issue. Perhaps they would like to fold origami cranes like Sadako. (There
are many books and Web sites that explain how to do this.) Then they could
send the cranes to a person or place in order to bring attention to the issue.
Or they may want to create some other relevant symbol. You can talk with
the children about getting local newspaper coverage of their efforts.
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Activity #4
Grades 3–6
No More Garbage!
A 2-Day Classroom Experiment
More and more people realize the importance of recycling trash. Equally
crucial, however, is the need to use less of our planet’s resources—to REUSE
materials and REDUCE our garbage. Could your class go a whole day without
throwing anything away? Take the dare!
Explain to your class the goal of the project: to go a whole day without
throwing anything away.
Begin by giving each of the children a plastic bag at the beginning of the day.
Tell them to put all their trash in it throughout Day 1.
At the end of Day 1, spread newspaper on the desks and take a look at what
got thrown away. What could have been reused? How? What garbage was
unnecessary? Could they have used a washable container for lunch instead
of a disposable bag? Problem-solve together about how to solve the trash
problem. Will you want to create compost for a local garden? Will you want to
make paper or learn to write on it twice?
Write a note home together to your parents to explain your goal. Encourage
them to support the children’s efforts at home and explain that they should
NOT buy anything new for this experiment. Reuse what you already have at
home!
Day 2 is NO MORE GARBAGE Day! Put the trash cans away and see how you do.
If somebody thinks they have to throw something away, problem-solve as a
class. How can you reuse it? How could you replace it with something reusable
tomorrow?
As an extra challenge, invite your children’s families to try this experiment
at home!
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