Peace Offerings

Listed below are some but not all of the activities and events that we partook of at the Children's Peace Tent at the United For Peace and Justice Festival on April 29, 2006. There was more...

One lovely woman brought a drum and we held the impromptu "Parade of Three or More."

We walked around the Children's Peace tent which was strung with the names, ages, units and details of the deaths of all of the coalition soldiers killed in Iraq and we sang "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."

But mostly people puppeted, played and relaxed and some read and some had their face painted. It had the peaceful feeling of a the last Black Out in NY - a community carnival of laughter and love...

April 29th, 2006
Children's Peace Tent at the United for Peace and Justice Festival in NYC

1) Silly Hats For Peace: punch holes in paper plates, tie with ribbon and decorate with stickers and markers and odds and ends. (Also makes a fun "dance prop" - add some bells and it is a great percussion instrument:)

2) Paper Bag Puppets: Make puppets with paper bags, construction paper, glue and scissors. If you want to get fancy buy googiley eyes:)

3) Hands Off Iran Hand Fans: Precut hand outlines and have the kids decorated them with markers, glitter, stickers etc and then tape/staple them to a tongue depressor. Make little stickers that say "Hands off Iran." Just format the images in word and run them through a color printer onto a sticker/label sheet.

3) Face Paint Face Peace (Someone donated some GREAT face paints ... it is well worth it to spend a little extra and get the good stuff since it lasts longer and is easier to use.)

4) Spin Art For Peace- pick up a spin art machine at Toys-R-Us and get some glitter. It captivates children They will wait in line for it, discuss it, watch it, ohh and ahh over it ... they love it!

5) Putt For Peace: We made a mini golf course that we decorated with UFPJ stickers etc. We had ramps and even a little house to hit into. This was a wildly successful activity and was made with foam core, cardboard tubes and decorated with stickers and markers. It will only last one use. You can pick up a mini golf set for cheap at any kids store.

We had a few other events/activities but they were a little more intensive in terms of prep and implementation:

Make your own Peace Book: We printed out lyric sheets for songs and provided construction paper, staples and decoration items so kids could staple together and "make" their own books. Actually - grownups were more into this than kids. We think that's because the 4 people who had volunteered to do music were unable to come we didn't have the resources. TThe CD player broke and there was not so much singing also the kids didn't know the songs. This project really requires supervision, adult interaction and a working boom box.

Si Se Puede Puppet House: We donated a puppet house We had made last year. It was easy to make but fairly elaborate: it's about 7 feet tall with turrets and multi colored towers. Really any puppet house would do - but if you have a puppet house kids insist on Puppet Shows. We had the kids put on their own. It was awesome.

Remembering the War Dead: We copied the lists of all the soldiers who have been killed in Iraq from the CNN website and pasted them as tables into Excel. Then we created Mail Merge documents that would format the names and info as lables. We printed out the (2000 plus) names on shipping labels and stickered them to multi colored index cards (2 names per card). We punched holes in the index cards and strung them up around the perimeter of the kids tent. The woman in charge of the Code Pink Peace Ribbons has those cards (some are missing). We did not have time to do the Iraqi casualties but that can be done faily simply using the Excel tables and the Mail Merge. This is labor intensive and fairly expensive project (75-80 bucks for labels, cards and ribbon) but it is really effective and people all helped out. It was also terribly sad.

Misc:

We brought books from home and set up a poetry corner (Neruda, LOA American Poetry, Ain't I A Woman etc.). we also brought coloring books, toys etc.

We had a SAND BOX: this is really useful b/c it is perfect for babies/toddlers. We used an old plastic box filled with the sand we use to pot our cactus. We filled it with sea shells, kitchen strainers, and plastic dinosaurs and rocks.

Its seems like alot: and it was:)

But the thing with kids is that they all have different developmental abilites so we had enough projects that pretty much every age group had an activity they could enjoy.

Also: Sidewalk Chalk, jump ropes, mini basket ball and a Chess Game ... very popular!