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Kids Creating Circles of Peace
Story Starters and Activities for All Kids Who Want to Build Peace
With permission of Anne Marie Witchger and Susan Vogt, Families Against Violence Advocacy Network (FAVAN)
A Message to Educators, Parents, Group Leaders:
This booklet from the Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ) is laid out according to the seven themes of the Pledge of Nonviolence:
- To Respect Self and Others
- To Communicate Better
- To Listen
- To Forgive
- To Respect Nature
- To Play Creatively
- To Be Courageous
Within each theme are two or three Story Starters meant to stimulate the young person's imagination about how he/she would deal with a particular real-life situation. We have arranged each set of Story Starters so that the first one is told in cartoon format and would more likely appeal to younger children and the other ones are told in words with older children in mind. Certainly children could respond to any that they like. Depending on your time frame, you may ask the children to do just one from each theme or to do all of them.
Some suggestions:
- Ask younger children to draw their responses since they will often not be as adept at writing. Even older children, however, can find drawing to be a more expressive format.
- Since some children may want or need more space to draw than we provide, have them draw on a blank sheet of paper, even on poster-size paper.
- Encourage the children to do posters of their solutions that can be displayed for all to see. Teachers may want to have a week or month devoted to each of the Pledge themes and display the children's artwork at that time.
- Encourage the children to use their imaginations and search for creative solutions to the stories. We've left plenty of space for them to write or draw. Ask them to keep going as long as they have space left. This helps them push past the most obvious or simplistic answers.
- Explain to your group that many of these stories were written by elementary school children about their own experiences. We stopped their stories in midstream to allow others to make up their own endings.
We have also included some questions for you to use in your follow-up discussion of what they have written or drawn. Be flexible in how you use these, and add any others that you think may stimulate reflection on each theme and how it affects the children. For older children, you may ask them to respond to these questions in writing also, but more often you may simply use these questions to help spark continuing discussion with your group.
Following the Story Starters is a page for the children to tell a story, either in words or pictures, of something that happened in their own life that relates to the theme. The final page of each theme is devoted to next steps. We list a variety of follow-up activities and resources that either you or the children's families can use to further their appreciation for each Pledge theme. A natural conclusion to this project would be for everyone to sign the Pledge of Nonviolence together (or to suggest that they do it with their own families). We hope you enjoy your role as mentor to budding authors and peacemakers.
Purchase from FAVAN, Institute for Peace and Justice, 4144 Lindell Blvd., #408, St. Louis, MO 63108
314-533-4445 .Fax: 314-715-6455 E-mail: ipj@ipj-ppj.org Cost: $4.95
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Information:
info@uua.org