Happy Earth Day 2014!

Today we celebrated Earth day. We celebrate this day each year and this year I decided to change things up a bit. In the past we have focused heavily on being earth friendly. We try to be very concious of our carbon footprint and do what we can to lessen it. We have covered recycling, reducing waste, etc for so many years I thought it was time for another focus. This year we focused on Peace.

Montessori focuses a lot on peace in the classroom but sometimes at home we forget how important it can be. There are less conflicts at home just because there are less people to conflict with. I really want my children to know about other cultures and how other people live. The more we understand other people, the more we feel connected to them.

Yesterday we made tie dye t-shirts to wear today. I made B's for her because 2yr olds and permanent dye don't mix well. Plus, it turned out to be a bit difficult because I forgot to wet the shirts first and the dye took a while to soak in well. T made his entirely on his own. He is so proud of it! I think they turned out so nice. We are planning to put a saying on them but we ran out of time. Soon they will have one of our favorite sayings on them .... "Peace begins with me"

We read three books during our Earth Day Peace lessons. The first one is called If Peace is... by Jane Baskwill. Its a wonderful book that compares peace to everyday items that a child would recognize, like a candle or a song. It talks about peace being a promise that we all must work to keep. The kids really enjoyed it and I thought it was lovely.

The second book we read was called All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka. This is a wonderful book that talks about all of the colors that people (children in particular) come in. It compares our colors to things found in nature. B was especially interested in this book.

The final book we read was called Only One You by Linda Kranz. This book was so much fun and nearly made me cry, it was so sweet. Its a story of a young fish receiving advice from his parents about life. They give wonderful advice about being yourself and being a friend to others. It ends with a sweet line that we incorporated into our craft: "There is only one you in this great big world....make it a better place." We painted rocks to look like fish in the book, used some scrap wood to make a little sign and placed it in our garden pebble path.

The kids had fun painting some river rocks with paint to look like fish. B wanted pink (her favorite color) and she mixed red and white on the rock to make a wonderful pink fish. She then painted a yellow fin all by herself, which I didn't expect but she was looking at the book for quite a while before painting. I helped her with the eye and mouth.

T started by painting a white belly, a blue body and red fins. He made his entirely on his own and was very interested in the details.

Here are all three of our fish. Mine is the last one, and I had fun making it as well. I admit, I am not an artist, but it was fun.

T used some scrap wood from boards he broke in karate to make this sign. We worked together to color the sign with shades of blue sharpies to resemble water. I wrote the quote with black sharpie. T used his kid sized hammer and nails to put the steak on the back of the sign and pounded it into the ground.

I love how this turned out in our yard. You can see in the background of the last picture we have a gazebo in the back of the yard, this path leads to it.

While we were outside, we also spotted a dove flying into a tree in our yard. Of course, doves are a symbol of Peace.

I also want to give credit to this blog for the idea of making the sign and rock fish. I found it through pintrest. http://myprimarypassion.blogspot.com/2011/06/where-do-i-begin.html