35. Home Planet Earth – Stunning Performance
The Home Planet Earth video is now available. It is a beautiful world geography activity. Here are some simple ideas of how you can use it in the classroom and/or as part of a stunning performance.
The song “Home Planet Earth” travels alphabetically through 56 countries (including one continent) around the world. It introduces students to each country by way of a striking image of a folk dance from that land. It is amazing how much information can pass through each image. Children can imitate these postures while singing the song.
This approach causes students to experience the lesson whilst learning the names and getting a feeling for the nature of each culture. In a performance you can project the video on a screen and have the children accompany the video with freeze postures while singing the song. It is a stunning and evocative presentation.
Along with the video, we are including more detailed instructions to create a performance and a file of the images that can be printed out to help with your practice.
The Song – Home Planet Earth
- “Whatever the color of your skin
- Or the country of your birth
- Every single human is a citizen
- Of our home planet Earth”
Think what kind of world we could be part of if only the sanctity of human life, of all life were held by all in reverence; that our mutual citizenship ‘upon’ this Earth was honored as a universal grant and charter.
There are inherent, instinctive human values (pre-ordained by the fact of our existence). Racism is learned, not inherent. Bigotry is taught by example. It is not ‘human nature’! Prejudice and hatred are learned behaviors.
But children can learn otherwise! That is the responsibility, province and privilege of educators: To uphold the inherent values of our common humanity!
~PAZ
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