The Wolf Story!

In Native American lore, wolf is often referred to as Teacher, or Pathfinder, “the forerunner of new ideas who returns to the clan to teach and share medicine.  If you were to keep company with wolves, you would find an enormous sense of family within the pack..” Jamie Sams & David Carson

I was saddened this week to read of the death of Wolf #527, one of Yellowstone’s most beloved wolves, who was one of the first to be killed in Montana’s first wolf hunt in modern times.  So this Blog is dedicated to Wolf #527.

Humans have long had a fearful relationship with wolves; we read our children Little Red Riding Hood, associate wolves with horror movies and all things dark and dangerous.  But here in North America wolf attacks are rare and I have not heard of anyone being killed by a healthy, wild wolf.

As with all wild creatures, wolves must be respected; they are wild and should remain so.  There is a story that I love to tell before I sing the Wolf Song, that’s called The Boy and the Rattlesnake – It illustrates the point well.

The gray, or timber wolf is the best-known and most widespread species; they live in open and wooded areas.  Once common throughout North America and Eurasia, these wolf populations are now limited to parts of Asia and North America.  Their numbers continue to diminish in many of these regions however there have been some successful re-introduction programs such as the one in Yellowstone.

Wolves are intelligent, social animals that usually live in packs numbering up to two-dozen animals.  Their diet can include mice, rabbits and birds but their main prey are larger animals such as deer, moose, caribou and elk which they catch by stalking and chasing.

Interconnections! Wolves are a Keystone species meaning that they play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of an eco-system.  By controlling the populations of large herbivores in a given habitat it has been observed that they directly impact the overall health of the forests and watershed in which they live.

Forest researchers in Yellowstone National Park noticed that the quaking aspen tree had begun to grow back after the wolves had been re-introduced to the park.  The quaking aspen is one of the most ecologically important riverside trees in the Yellowstone ecosystem.   Biologists determined a direct link between the wolves and the tree because elk forage differently when predators are present.  Without the wolves, the elk decimated the quaking aspen resulting in shoreline erosion and a multitude of consequences that touched everything from fish to beavers.  You can read the whole story Here; it is worth the read as it is quite amazing!

Lesson Plans: 

1.     Tell the story, the Boy and the Rattlesnake, invite students to write about an experience they have had with a wild animal. 

2.      Play the Wolf Song (I have uploaded it to my MySpace page).  In the song, the protagonist tries to help the wolf.  While this is a romantic possibility, in real life it should be played out differently.  What do the children think should have happened? What do they think happened to the wolf?

3.     What is another Keystone species?

I used to live in the country, north of Montreal, and sometimes in the cold winter months I would hear the wolves calling.  It was a mysterious, primal sound; one that I think is deeply ingrained in our cellular memory!  Wolves are mysterious, just as is life; to me that is the wonder of the wild and as long as there are wild places we will have the opportunity to be inspired.

Have a wonderful experience!

In gratitude to the earth for life!

Rosie

By the way - the songs are available as a Free download on MySpace for a week or so after they are first posted.  Otherwise all my songs can be bought on iTunes, Amazon and other internet sites.

The Little Earth Charter!

A few years ago I had the good fortune to meet JC Little, an incredibly talented animator and President of Little Animation Inc.  I was searching for someone who could help me create a little character called Rosie who would carry my songs into the future with flair!  And voila, there was JC!  She had already created a Planet Earth a character for her series Kids Stories International! and was looking to expand her ideas!

So, one thing led to another and Shazam! JC created little Rosie and we decided to merge the two characters into Earth to Rosie! who would host of a series of  value-rich, fun, animation content for children 4-8.

I shared with JC some of the work I had been doing with the International Earth Charter Initiative and she suggested creating a little Earth Charter, that would introduce children to the concepts outlined in the grownup Earth Charter document in a language kids could relate to, animation and music!  We wanted to create a product for teachers and parents that would integrate universal and environmental values and act as a springboard to introduce students to a wide variety of subjects within the curriculum.

In consultation with the Earth Charter Initiative and Manitoba’s Ministry of Education Citizenship and Youth, Little Animation Inc. and the Sustainable Development Innovations Fund with Manitoba Conservation provided funding for the project, which is now completed and available on DVD in English and French! The DVD comes with a teaching Guide and its content relates directly to learning standards for Grades Pre K-3: earth science, physical science, life science, ecology, environmental studies, geography, history, social studies, citizenship education, and moral education. 

Since I cannot post a video on this Blog page, I have posted the video for Principle Number One – Life - on my MySpace page Blog . 

You can view Principle Number Two, Interconnected on our  Website  We have a Little Earth Charter Facebook Group and invite you to join us there and to share this amazing program with other teachers.  If you like what you find, you can buy the DVD  which comes with a Teaching Guide, at our website.

JC and I continue to develop and produce programs in the Earth To Rosie! brand and you can find some great interactive games for kids on our website   www.littleanimation4kids.com  such as The Footprint Game, Rosie’s Heart, Passion Fashion as well as Rosie playing some of my songs!

Have fun and let us know what you create!  On our website you can see what teachers around the world have created using the Little Earth Charter!

In gratitude for life!

Rosie

The Little Earth Charter is directed by JC Little, the eight shorts have been animated by 1996 Oscar nominee Alexei Kharitidi, with music performed and arranged by children’s entertainer Rosie Emery.

The Black-capped Chickadee!

                                                    

As the winter approaches in Canada and the northern United States, there is a sweet little bird that finds itself with a lot fewer neighbors than during the summertime!  As other birds fly south, the black-capped chickadee sticks out the cold and is fun to watch at bird-feeders or flitting from branch to branch in the forest.

These friendly little birds are a delight to all, including children. Curious and friendly, they have been known to alight on an outstretched hand offering some food! They are a good bird to watch in urban settings, and if you put up a bird feeder close to your classroom window, the black-capped chickadees will be sure to come by!  

During the summer months, chickadees feed mostly on insects, grubs, fruit and seeds and they often hang upside down from the twigs as they feed.   In order to survive the harsh winter months, when food is scarce, chickadees have evolved their beaks to enable them to crack the seeds of coniferous trees, which are high in fat and oil and available year round.  Chickadees also use thermoregulation to lower their body temperature at night, enabling them to conserve energy.

Biologists studying the alarm calls of the black-capped chickadee discovered that the sound of the bird’s songs signal not only the presence but also the size of nearby predators.!

So, here are a few ideas for Lesson Plans:

1.  First off, how about building a bird feeder, so that you can watch the chickadees! You can build one with a  Plastic Milk Container or with a Milk Carton As for food, you can learn How to attract chickadees to your bird feeder?

2.  What does the chickadee song sound like - you can listen to the video posted below - have a chickadee song contest and see who sounds the most like the bird itself!

3. Chickadees, like other creatures, have to watch out for predators such as owls and hawks.  This is the web of life.  Invite the children to draw a web of life.  A good example  for them to watch is the video of the Interconnected Principle of the Little Earth Charter 

which can be viewed at: www.littleearthcharter.org

      

Interconnections: Many species have evolved their anatomies in some way for survival or a better quality of life.  In an earlier Blog about the toucan, I mentioned how toucan’s beaks actually cool them down.  Hummingbirds have evolved their long beaks to enable them to reach deep into flowers to drink the nectar and in some cases plants are believed to have evolved their flowers to attract more hummingbirds!

Song! I have up-loaded the Chickadee Blues song and lyrics to my MySpace page, so the kids can sing along!

Story! There is a story that I know, which you can share with the children, but it is a little sad, so obviously it is at your discretion.  It is a Cree story called

The Cry of the Chickadee

Book! A fabulous book about chickadees is Get That Chickadee Feeling! By Frank Glew

Information: More information on chickadees can be found at:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-capped_Chickadee/id

And finally I found this video of a black-capped chickadee singing! I have up-loaded it to my Myspace page, but it is also on Youtube at:

Black-capped chickadee sings!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW4xXbiKCPo

Have fun!

In joy and gratitude for this life!

Rosie

Punk the Skunk!

Nobody relishes the idea of being sprayed by a skunk, and if you own a dog punks are certainly on your list of things to be avoided, alongside porcupines!  (I used to live in the country with two dogs!)

Skunks often inhabit urban centers and are therefore one of the species that is cool for kids to study, since they might actually get to see one! When it comes to teaching young kids, K-5, I am a huge proponent of learning about our backyards, about what lives close to us, or what is happening in our neighborhood.  I learned a lot from David Sobel’s book Beyond Ecophobia.  Sobel cautions us to not overwhelm children with environmental facts from around the globe, but rather to focus on that which is nearby.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-for-life/803

When I wrote the song Punk the Skunk, I had just seen a skunk wandering up the road near my house.  I quietly watch him as he shuffled away, and I thought about what it must be like to be avoided by everyone!  Skunk offers an opportunity to discuss a few things with kids:

1.     Why do creatures have protective mechanisms?

2.     What other species have similar types of protective mechanisms?

3.     What it would feel like, as a human, if no one wanted to talk to you, or if you are being bullied?

4.      

Striped skunks are omnivores, and their diet really depends on where they are living.  In the summer they eat mostly insects, including grasshoppers, crickets, wasps and beetles; they also eat spiders, toads, frogs, lizards, snakes, mice and even chipmunks!

A skunk’s spray comes from a pair of large scent glands, with small ducts, located on either side of the rectum.  They discharge their musky spray with a strong contraction from their hips!  They can shoot that spray for up to twelve feet, so don’t get too close to a skunk!!  However they would rather avoid using their spray and only use it at a last resort!

Interconnections! Skunks eat all kinds of grubs and small rodents that can be harmful to crops, so they are often welcomed by farmers into their fields!

There is some good information on skunks at Project Wild:

http://www.projectwildlife.org/living-skunks.htm

Here is a legend about skunk from the Indian Reading Series.

http://www.nwrel.org/indianed/indianreading/1/book19.pdf

I have up-loaded the Punk the Skunk song to my Myspace page.  http://www.myspace.com/iirainbowdolphin

By the way, please let me know if there is a particular song from a Blog Post that you want to hear – I can only put ten songs up on Myspace at a time, so I have to take some down in order to make room for others, as I Blog about different things!

I would also welcome any news of projects that you might do inspired by this Blog or the songs and stories!

Be well,

Have fun,

With gratitude for this life,

Rosie

Tropical Forests!

It’s a beautiful autumn day here in Montreal and the carpets of yellow leaves make a golden backdrop for the blackness of the tree trunks; the air is damp and smoky as people light up fires to warm themselves from the Saturday evening chill.  It seems a long way from the tropical forests!

I was lucky enough to visit the rainforest in Costa Rica, a magical place filled with bird and monkey cries, exotic fragrances and some not so cuddly critters…..like tarantulas! 

When I began this journey of writing songs for kids about nature I read everything I could about what was happening on earth, to the earth!  That was back in 1989 and the prospects for the Amazon rainforest seemed pretty bleak; seven footballs fields per day were being destroyed, according to most accounts.  Sadly the destruction continues and a report earlier this year from Greenpeace and the Guardian highlights some of the on-going problems. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/31/cattle-trade-brazil-greenpeace-amazon-deforestation

With kids, I choose to focus on the beauty and marvel of these forests; illustrating how they are the lungs of the earth; that they are home to at least five million species (including humans), which is between 50-80% of all living things!

Rainforests play a major role in the local and global climate; they contribute a wealth of ingredients to much of the medicine that we use; over seven thousand compounds used in western medicine today are derived from rainforest plants.  Many products that are familiar to us come from the rainforest or contain an ingredient from there.

Fascinating people continue to live in these forests, like the Yanomani of Brazil and the Penan in Borneo; their knowledge of rainforest plants and animals is precious and can be extremely beneficial to us all.

Lynne Cherry’s book The Great Kapok tree, http://www.lynnecherry.com/ is a wonderful story to introduce children to the wonders of these tropical forests.  My song, the Tropical Forest can be used to make Lynne’s book into a musical!  I have uploaded the song to my Myspace page: (http://www.myspace.com/iirainbowdolphin for those interested.  I have also uploaded the Slothful Sloth song and the Ant song, Bat song and Mosquito song are all still up there.  You can download the Slothful Sloth song for free while it is up!

Animals of the Rainforest is a good video and can be found Online at Video Library:

http://tinyurl.com/yfb74zs

Schools I visited sometimes had classrooms that were turned into rainforests!  They decorated with pictures, played a rainforest tape with sounds of the birds and monkeys, sprayed everyone with a fine mist to imitate the constant moisture and had a rainforest feast with Brazil nuts and rainforest crunch ice cream, from Ben & Jerry’s!

Interconnections! The example I gave in my previous blog about toucans is good – toucans eat berries and then poop out the seeds far and wide in the forest, helping the trees ensure their chances of survival.  Fruit bats do this too.  Harlequin beetles transport pseudo scorpions around helping them to reach new habitat – they feed on decaying fig trees; cutter ants chew up leaves and make compost piles under the ground where they grow mushrooms!  Rainforests act as carbon sinks, meaning that they ingest huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and replenish it with oxygen.  There are so many connections to discover in tropical rainforests not the least of which is the fact that they impact the entire earth through their cycles of moisture and release.

Have fun learning!

For the earth,

In gratitude,

Rosie

I am a toucan and a toucan can be.....

Well, for absolutely no reason other than it popped into my head, today’s Blog is about toucans!  My Toucan song is one of my favorites, and I discovered a while back that someone had used it for their video on Youtube and that tickled me no end!

The Toucan song was one of the first songs that I wrote, back in the early 90’s, when I set out to teach kids about ecology and sustainability.  I’d heard a horrific story from a friend who was a pet store-owner, about toucans being smuggled into Canada in tennis ball containers.  I know, hard to imagine, right, but apparently true.

There are many different kinds of toucans - the biggest and most recognized being the toco toucan from Brazil.  Male toucans have the largest beak of any toucan and one of their favorite pastimes is “beak wrestling”! It’s true they have been seen actually doing this!  Another game they play is a form of catch; they toss berries to one another!

Toucans live in the canopy layer of the rainforest, where they hang out eating fruits and seeds that grow there.  These colorful birds do not have the greatest parenting reputation, as they are known to leave their nests for long periods of time!  Nests are usually made in holes that they find in the trees.

Connections!  Toucans and other fruit eating birds (or bats) help to disperse seeds throughout the forest, as the seeds are not digested and remain in the bird’s poop as it falls to the ground.   With trees having to compete for space in the dense vegetation of the rainforest, it is extremely beneficial for a species to have their seeds spread out.

Here is a great article about how toucan’s beaks actually cool the birds down!

I also use the song to teach kids about pets - the responsibility of owning a pet that is - and it is useful as an example of consumerism.  In the story, I buy the toucan; in reality, if we purchase a bird like that, it is likely to cause more birds to be captured from the forest.  As consumers we have the power to make choices that can ultimately force companies, or people, to stop cruel or unreasonable practices.

I have posted the Toucan Song to my MySpace page with the lyrics. 

By the way, I change the songs all the time because I am only allowed ten songs, so if you happen to read a blog and the song is not there just let me know and I will put it back up again!

For the earth,

In gratitude!

Rosie

Recycling and Climate Change!

All those green boxes are out on my street today and pretty much every household seems to have one, which is a great sign!  Recycling is one of the success stories when it comes to reducing our ecological footprint. 

However, there’s always room for improvement and awareness of the reasons for recycling can inspire kids to continue the habit as they march through tweendom and beyond! 

Comprehending the causes of climate change can be quite exhausting!  It is complex!  But there are some basic scientific facts that can help kids understand the intricate balance of this beautiful planet upon which we live! 

·      The natural greenhouse effect is crucial for maintaining an optimum temperature for life on earth and is created by the accumulation of gases way up in the atmosphere.  These gases trap the sun’s heat from totally escaping back out into space – kind of like a greenhouse!

·      Some of the naturally occurring greenhouse gases are: water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorinated fluorocarbons!

·      Human-generated gas emissions are mostly of carbon dioxide, but human practices, such as large hydro-electric dam projects and landfills, also increase methane emissions – not to mention the large herds of cows and sheep passing wind!

NOAA’s website has a complete guide to global warming:

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

What does recycling have to do with the climate?  Recycling and waste reduction are related to climate change because the energy that is used to process new materials, such as glass, paper and plastic, involves burning fossil fuels such as gasoline and coal which are both major sources of carbon dioxide.  Landfills also produce methane as waste material compounds, generating heat; in some countries this waste is collected and used as a bio-fuel.  This article from the EPA shows how we can efficiently capture waste and reuse it efficiently.

http://www.epa.gov/lmop/proj/prof/profile/dentontexashybridlfgrecov.htm

OK, how about some fun!  The Recycling Boogie song and lyrics is up on my MySpace page at: http://www.myspace.com/iirainbowdolphin

I was looking for some stories about recycling and then I thought, wait a minute, how about asking the kids to imagine their own journey as a plastic bottle?  How is plastic made?  And for a really good geography lesson, ask the kids to find out where bauxite comes from – that is the main ingredient in aluminum soda pop cans.

If you haven’t already seen it, the Story of Stuff is definitely worth sharing with older kids – 7+  http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Recycling toys, clothes and other household items is really important too, its not just the plastic, paper and glass.  Most cities have hazardous waste collections for household paints, batteries and other toxic substances.

For younger children 4-8, try out the Earth to Rosie! Footprint Game at

http://www.littleanimation4kids.com/footprint/

Have fun!

Rosie