Listening to a fairytale and doing exercises about the impact plastic has on the environment

Environment

Listening to a fairytale and doing exercises about the impact plastic has on the environment

To understand the impacts plastic and microplastic has on the environment and people, children are welcomed to listen to the fairytale “Plastic rain” and join in creating artworks. 

“Plastic rain”
High above the ground lives the cloud family. Every day clouds, both small and big, work so that the Earth can feel good – they work to make sure that the sun doesn’t burn too hot, that there are shadows, where Earth can hide, that there is water it can drink. In the winter, when nature sleeps, clouds cover everything with a blanket of snow. Day after day they take care of meadows, towns, waters, animals and humans. 
         Every cloud has something to take care of. For one it’s the forest, for another – a garden, but for the Little Cloud it’s a Tree in the city park. He looks after the Tree from the moment the sun rises until it dawns, and the Little Cloud is up during the nights too. The darkness of the night doesn’t scare him because down there – in the city – there are millions of lights, but in the sky – millions of stars. Then the Little Cloud jumps on the back of the Wind Bird and flies through the skies. When the light of the stars and the lights of the city collide, it seems as if they are running through the light itself.
“Uhuu!” sings the Wind Bird.
“Wee!” happily yells the Little Cloud. 
 In the morning both of them get back to their work. 
While the Wind Bird throws around seeds, scents and water drops, Little Cloud creates bright water drops. Look, how his Tree has spread his branches towards the skies! The Little Cloud notices what the Tree is asking for and immediately gives it fresh rain water. When Little Cloud has enough time, it makes tiny water drop necklaces and decorates the Tree. but during hot days he can’t be late – then the Little Cloud garbs a bucket of water and throws it onto the Tree – so that it can drink as much as it needs. 
Sometimes the water that was meant for the Tree, gets the Little Cloud’s friend the Wind Bird. Then the Wind Bird gets angry and doesn’t bring any gifts to the Little Cloud. However, the Wind Bird’s anger winds out really quickly and then he brings something nice to the Little Cloud again – a birds feather or a deer’s eyelash. 
This time the Wind Bird has a small bit of yellow plastic on it’s wing. 
“You’re welcome!” he graciously gives it to the Little Cloud. 
“What is it?” Little Cloud inspects the yellow bit of plastic. 
“I don’t know, there are a lot of these on Earth,” says the Wind Bird.
If there are a lot of them, the Little Cloud wants more, therefore he asked his friend to bring a few more. He knows what to do with them. 
Soon Wind Bird brought blue, green, pink, yellow, orange, brown, gray, black and white bits of plastic, and with those Little Cloud made colorful drops. He was sure that the Tree will be happily surprised about the colorful rain. 
In a late afternoon Little Cloud started dropping the colorful rain onto the Tree. These drops got caught in the branches and made the ground under the Tree colorful as well. Little Cloud gave him a lot of drops, but the Tree was still looking at the sky expecting water. Upon seeing that, the Little Cloud ran to make more colorful drops and give it to the Tree, but the Tree wasn’t happy. Little Cloud then decided to create colorful necklaces and give those to the Tree, but it didn’t change anything – the Tree was still feeling down. And that made the Little Cloud sad as well. He went to hide in the sunset and wait for the Wind Bird. 
When the city was lit up with the city lights and the sky was covered in stars, Little Cloud and Wind Bird met again. 
“The Tree doesn’t like my gifts,” sadly says Little Cloud. 
Wind Bird doesn’t think that. He reminds Little Cloud that the Tree has always been grateful about the fresh rain and small snowflakes. Little Cloud remembered those times and smiled. He asked the Wind Bird not to bring the plastic bits ever again.  
 “Deal,” agreed his friend. “Now I have something more important to bring!” he announced. When the sun will rise Wind Bird is going to bring the story of the Little Cloud, the Tree and the plastic bits to the world, but Little Cloud is going to bring fresh water to the Tree.
When that was decided, the Little Cloud got on the back of the Wind Bird and both of them headed for a new day. 

Author of the fairytale: Evija Gulbe 


IDEA FOR A CREATIVE TASK AFTER LISTENING TO THE FAIRYTALE
EXPERIENCE of a kindergarten “Pasaciņa” in Preiļi and it’s 5th group “Zirnīši”


To do this task, during our walk outside, we observed trees and gathered natural materials. That way they learned or refreshed their knowledge about trees and the existing season – autumn. Together with children we came to the decision that we will make one tree – a birch. 


To decide which materials to use, we also talked about waste and which is the recycled waste. That is why we decided to create the base of the tree from things that can be recycled – cardboard cutouts and rolls, that we covered in gouache paint – with that we also refreshed our knowledge about colors and how to work with paint. In order for the tree to look as real as possible, the teacher made small holes in the cardboard with a drill, so that we could put in the smaller branches at the base of the tree. 

We also made necklaces for the tree with colorful bits of plastic – just like the ones in the fairytale. Kids learnt how to properly create necklaces. 

While creating this task, kids also made water drops with plasticine (with that you can also create little bases with which to secure branches in their place), as well as you can use basically anything you find and prefer to create a little face for the tree (we used pistachio shells). 

To create the Little Cloud, kids blew balloons. They created the exterior by glueing onto the balloon different fabrics. 

In the fairytale there were a lot of different emotions – joy, sadness, etc. To learn a bit more about emotions and how to create them, children try to imitate the emotions that were felt both by the Little Cloud and the Tree. The kids also learnt how to guess the reasons and causes for differen emotions. 

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