MORAL TALES
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 10: FOOTPRINTS: TREADING SOFTLY ON EARTH
BY ALICE ANACHECKA-NASEMAN AND ELISA PEARMAIN
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/8/2014 5:13:27 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
SESSION OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
When one tugs on a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. — John Muir
In today's world, one cannot speak of morality, goodness and justice without considering human impact on the Earth. The Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes promote and affirm both an attitude of respect and actions that honor the interdependent web of life of which we are a part.
This session focuses on interconnections. It communicates to children both facts and meaning of the interdependent web of life, and aims to instill the need to act responsibly. Participants will hear a true story about human attempts to control nature with unexpected (and undesirable) results. With an emphasis on living in balance and harmony with nature and being mindful — even shrinking — the footprint we humans leave on planet Earth, "Balance" will be added to the Moral Compass poster.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 2 |
Activity 1: Gems of Goodness | 5 |
Activity 2: Lap-Sit Balance Game | 8 |
Activity 3: Story Basket and Centering | 5 |
Activity 4: Story — Parachuting Cats to the Rescue | 10 |
Activity 5: "Live in Balance" Posters | 25 |
Activity 6: Clean-up | 2 |
Faith in Action: Helping Others Keep the Balance — Short-term | 25 |
Faith in Action: Toy and Book Drive — Long-term | 30 |
Closing | 3 |
Alternate Activity 1: Candles of Joys and Sorrows | 10 |
Alternate Activity 2: Interdependent Web Game | 5 |
Alternate Activity 3: Help or Harm the Earth? Game | 10 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
If at all possible, try to spend 5 minutes in nature. Listen for the sounds of animals and insects. Experience the weather — hot, cold, misty, or windy... Briefly meditate on your connection with all that is.
If you are not able to actually go outside or find a natural setting to enjoy, take a few minutes to imagine yourself in your favorite outdoor place. If possible, put on a tape or CD with nature sounds, or sit near a decorative fountain. Briefly meditate on your connection with all that is.
SESSION PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As children enter, greet them and direct them to the table with the gemstones.
Ask the children to choose one, two, or three gemstones to represent acts of goodness that they did or witnessed since the last time they came to Moral Tales. If you wish, help focus the children on generosity. Ask if any participants were generous or experienced generosity.
If any children are participating for the first time in the Gems of Goodness project, invite them to choose a notebook, write their name on it, and decorate it as they wish. Tell them they may also pick three gemstones to bring into the circle.
OPENING (2 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather the children in a circle. Light the chalice.
If some or all of the children are unfamiliar with the reading, teach it line by line. Then recite together:
Come into the circle of love and friendship.
Come into the community of justice and goodness.
Come and you shall know peace and joy.
Extinguish the chalice.
ACTIVITY 1: GEMS OF GOODNESS (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather the children around the table where you have placed the cloth, the jar or vase, and the gemstones. Ask who remembered to keep track of acts of goodness in their notebooks.
Invite volunteers to stand up, and tell the group about an act of goodness they engaged in (or witnessed, if you have offered this option), and place the gem in the glass jar or vase.
Indicate the Moral Compass poster. Mention the virtues that the group has explored in previous sessions. Suggest that the children try to think of some acts of goodness related to these virtues, as they share their gems of goodness.
Encourage newcomers to join the sharing once they've had a chance to see what the other children are doing.
Use these guidelines to organize the sharing:
It is very important to avoid judging participants, either with criticism or praise. Avoid phrases like, "Great job!" or "You're fantastic!" which might encourage the children to compete to share the "best" act of goodness or to perceive that different acts of goodness have greater or lesser value.
Instead, listen carefully to what the children tell you. Help them identify the virtues their acts of goodness represent. When appropriate, indicate a word or phrase on the Moral Compass poster that fits the act of goodness. This will help the children learn to recognize a variety of virtues in a variety of forms.
After each sharing, you may say something like, "Thank you for sharing," followed by a summarizing sentence such as:
Your specific responses to the acts of goodness children share will help them feel pride, a sense of accomplishment, and their own empowerment as agents of justice and goodness.
If children are not volunteering, call out various types of acts of goodness, and invite children to come up if they experienced that particular kind of goodness. You may call out:
When the sharing is finished, remind the children to take home their notebooks and continue to keep track of their acts of goodness.
If you are planning to do so, remind the children that they may mark their achievement with a special celebration when the group has filled the glass jar or otherwise reached an established goal. If the group is approaching the goal, you may wish to brainstorm with them about the celebration. Suggestions might include having a special treat for a snack, or ending early to do physical games outside.
Whatever way you choose to mark the jar being filled, once it has been filled you may empty it and start over again.
Including All Participants
If any participants are not mobile, you or another child can accommodate by passing the jar. If a child is not verbal, you may wish to invite a participant to choose another child, or a co-leader, to read his/her acts of goodness from his/her notebook and place a gemstone in the jar.
ACTIVITY 2: LAP-SIT BALANCE GAME (8 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Ask the group if they can define the word "balance." Invite everyone try to stand on one foot. Explain that when your body is off balance, you sway to one side, and then you might sway to the other side, but balance is when you come back to center.
Gather the children standing in a circle. Ask everyone to turn one-quarter of the way to the left — you may need to demonstrate — so that they are all facing clockwise. Say:
Please take two big steps sideways, into the center of the circle. Keep moving toward the center until you are all standing very close together.
Tell the group that you are going to turn the music on and while it is playing they should walk clockwise around the circle but when they hear the music stop, they should bend their knees until they are sitting on the lap of the person behind them. Start the music. After 30 seconds, stop it. Help the children from outside the circle to help the group achieve balance with everyone sitting on the lap of the person behind him or her.
Once balance is achieved, have the group stand up, turn around and walk counterclockwise with the music. Again, stop the music and have everyone sit on the lap behind him or her. Keep the group in this position and ask:
Allow some responses, but ask them not to move. Then ask:
After they've answered the question briefly, invite one child to slowly, carefully remove himself/herself from the circle, while others try to compensate and maintain balance.
If necessary, reform the circle in lap-sitting position. Now ask:
Tell the group that you are going to go around the circle and choose people who should leave the circle slowly and carefully. Remove people, one at a time, until the whole circle has lost balance and can no longer maintain the lap-sitting circle position.
Have everyone sit down in the circle and take a few moments to discuss the experience. Ask questions such as:
Say something like:
Today we're going to talk about balance on the Earth. Nature is kind of like the circle we just made. In your circle, you were all interconnected. If one person moved it affected everyone. In nature everything is interconnected. We call that the interdependent web of all existence. When one part of nature changes, all of nature is affected and things can become unbalanced.
The goal of this activity is to give participants a hands-on, concrete experience of community-based balance. This will help them understand the notion of balance in nature later in the session. It is also a fun, group-building activity that will be beneficial to kinesthetic (movement-oriented) learners.
Including All Participants
To include a child who is in a wheelchair or has limited mobility, consider how you can keep this child safe during the activity. A child with limited mobility could have an adult leader behind him/her to help stabilize the circle and maintain safety. Another possibility is to invite the child with limited mobility to exit the circle first so that he/she will be less likely to fall as a result of the experience. A child in a wheelchair could have someone sit on her or his lap but cannot sit on the lap of the person behind him/her. He/she will have the advantage of not falling, along with the child on his/her lap. On the other hand, it will be difficult for the person behind the wheelchair to replicate the action of having another person on his/her lap, without tipping the wheelchair. Include these observations in the conversations you have about the activity. If any particular child would be unable to participate in the lap-sitting, you could ask him/her to control the music and/or to help people balance from outside of the circle.
ACTIVITY 3: STORY BASKET AND CENTERING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather the children in a circle in your storytelling area. Show them the story basket. Say something like, "Let's see what's in our story basket today."
If you are using an altar as a focal point, take the cloth cover from the storytelling basket and drape it over the box or small table. If the cloth cover has a special story, such as who made it, where it comes from, or the meaning of any symbols on it, briefly share the story with the children. Tell the group that the items in the story basket will be placed on this altar or table after the children have passed them around the circle.
Take the story-related items from the basket, one at a time, and pass them around. Briefly name the various objects. Children may ask questions about some of the items, begin to tell stories about similar things they have seen, or wonder aloud why an object is included. Tell them the group can talk more about the items after the story. Make sure you invite them to do so once you have finished the story and follow-up discussion.
If you have a globe or a world map, indicate Borneo. Tell the children that today's story is a true story, and Borneo is an island country where it happened.
As the story basket items come back to you, place them on the altar. Objects that are fragile, or which should not be passed around for any reason, can be held up for all to see and then placed directly on the altar. Display the items for children to look at as they listen to the story.
Now remove the chime, rain stick or other instrument from the story basket. Tell the children that every time you tell a story in Moral Tales, you will first use the instrument to help them get their ears, their minds, and their bodies ready to listen.
Invite them to sit comfortably and close their eyes (if they are comfortable doing so). You may tell them that closing their eyes can help them focus just on listening.
In a calm voice, say, in your own words:
As you breathe in, feel your body opening up with air. As you breathe out, feel yourself relaxing.
Repeat this once or twice and then say:
Now you are ready to listen. When I hit the chime (turn the rain stick over), listen as carefully as you can. See how long you can hear its sound. When you can no longer hear it, open your eyes and you will know it is time for the story to begin.
Sound the chime or other instrument. When the sound has gone, begin telling the story.
Including All Participants
If anyone in the group is unable to hold or pass items, or cannot see the items, make sure you or a child in the group offers the person a chance to see and touch each object, as needed.
Some people do not feel safe closing their eyes when they are in a group. If any children resist, respect their resistance and suggest that they find a single point of focus to look at instead.
If you have a basket of fidget objects for children who will listen and learn more effectively with something in their hands, make the fidget object basket available during this activity. For a full description of fidget objects and guidance on using them, see Leader Resources.
ACTIVITY 4: STORY — PARACHUTING CATS TO THE RESCUE (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the group that this story is about something that really happened in 1959. You might want to tell them how many years ago this was, to make the date more real to them. You can tell them that while it certainly did happen, some people say there were 20 cats and others say there were many thousands of cats.
Before you begin, look around the room and make eye contact with each person. Read or tell the story.
Ring the chime (use other sound instrument) to indicate that the story is over. Pause for a moment. Then help the group briefly discuss the story to make sure they understand it and to allow it to resonate. Allow personal experience comments about things such as children's pet cats, previous air travel, or knowledge about malaria, DDT, mosquitoes or rats.
Including All Participants
There are children for whom it is very difficult to sit still, even when they are paying attention to what is happening around them. This can be frustrating for teachers, as well as for the children who are expected to maintain stillness for prolonged periods of time. If you have children in the group for whom this is the case, consider adopting the use of "fidget objects" as described in Leader Resources. These fidget objects can provide a non-disruptive outlet for the need to move.
ACTIVITY 5: "LIVE IN BALANCE" POSTERS (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say in your own words:
In our lap-sitting circle, we saw that when one person left the circle it made it harder for everyone else to keep balance. In the story we just heard we learned that when one kind of animal dies or there are too many of one kind of animal, that can make it hard for nature to keep its balance. We learned about scientists who used chemicals in Borneo which killed some animals and made nature get out of balance.
We are going to make posters about keeping balance but first we're going to think about what things the Earth needs to be in balance.
As children name ideas, write each idea concisely on the sheet of newsprint you have posted. Allow no more than two or three minutes for this part of the activity. If the children have difficulty coming up with ideas, suggest things such as clean water, good atmosphere, clean air, insects to eat weeds, different kinds of birds, trees, different kinds of plants, pollinators or safe places for all animals to live.
Next form pairs or small groups of children and invite them to work together to create a "Live in Balance" poster. Read them the heading ("Live in Balance, the Earth Needs... ") and ask them to make pictures of everything they can think of that the Earth needs to have balance. Invite them to focus on one of the Earth's needs that the group has generated, and use pictures to show it. Not all children will be interested in doing or able to do this, but it may give some a helpful structure for this task. Others may be helped by an invitation to think broadly; you can point out that all creatures and plants have a role in nature's balance, so their posters can have lots of different animals on them.
Children can glue on pictures that you have cut out, or cut out their own to use.
Give each pair or small group a coffee filter parachute. Help them glue or staple it to the top of their poster so it reads, "The parachuting cat says ... Live in Balance, the Earth Needs... " If they like, one person can cut out or draw a picture of a cat to glue or staple to the bottom of the parachute. Hang completed posters on the wall of your meeting space or display them for the larger congregation.
The goal of this activity is to deepen the understanding of balance in nature and encourage a respect for all life within the web of existence. Concepts are reinforced through naming and artistically representing things that the Earth needs in order to remain in balance.
ACTIVITY 6: CLEAN UP (2 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite the children to return the meeting space to being as neat and clean as they found it. Ask them to put away the materials used in the session. Remind the children that other people may use the space, and should be able to find it clean and ready to use.
Engage the children in thinking about materials that can be recycled. Specifically identify and assign any clean-up task that will help the children understand and accept their own responsibility as users of the meeting space. Use the clean-up activity to help children think about how their actions affect others and gain good feelings from participating in a group effort.
If your congregation has a recycling system, ask a child or pair of children to take the recycled materials to the bins. Note: You may like to tie today's clean-up together with this session's short-term Faith in Action project, Helping Others Keep the Balance.
If your congregation does not have a recycling system, this may be a good Moral Tales project to initiate! In the meantime you might want to suggest that a different child each week take home a bag of recyclables. First, ask parents if they wish to participate in this project.
Including All Participants
All children should assist as able.
CLOSING (3 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This activity helps the children get used to practicing a closing ritual as a way of affirming their part in the faith community.
Gather the group in a circle. Thank the children for participating and sharing their stories and ideas in this session. Tell them something you liked about the way they worked together as a community.
Point out the Moral Compass poster. Say, in your own words:
Our Moral Compass shows us ways to do good things and make good decisions. Today we heard a story about a time when nature got out of balance because of a mistake made by human scientists. Unitarian Universalists believe that balance is very important in our interdependent web of all existence. We believe that to live in balance and to care for the Earth are acts of goodness and justice. We're going to add "Balance" as a direction on our Moral Compass.
Post or write the word "Balance" on the Moral Compass poster.
Remind the children that the next time they meet they will have a chance to add more gems to the Gems of Goodness jar. Encourage them to write down the acts of goodness and justice they do (or witness). You may like to invite them to pay special attention to times when people, including themselves, interact thoughtfully with nature and perform acts that help to keep the balance.
If appropriate, remind them that when the jar is full of gemstones, you will have a special celebration. You may wish to encourage them to try using forgiveness the other virtues you have posted on the Moral Compass poster.
Lead the children in singing Hymn 414 in Singing the Living Tradition, "As We Leave This Friendly Place." If the hymn is unfamiliar to some of the children, teach it line by line and then sing it once through together.
The song's lyrics are:
As we leave this friendly place,
Love give light to every face;
May the kindness which we learn
Light our hearts till we return.
Distribute the Taking It Home handout you have prepared. If new participants need to take home a Gems of Goodness notebook and parent handout, make sure they have these. Thank the children, tell them you look forward to seeing them next time, and dismiss the group.
Related content:
FAITH IN ACTION: SHORT-TERM — HELPING OTHERS KEEP THE BALANCE (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the children that even when there are plenty of trash bins and recycling bins around, people often appreciate reminders to help, not harm, the Earth by properly getting rid of their trash. Say:
Today we are going to make some posters to help people keep the balance, here at our congregation.
If a congregational leader is joining you to talk about recycling, introduce that person now and invite him/her to make a short presentation about how the recycling program came about at your Unitarian Universalist congregation and why it is an important endeavor for the Earth and for your congregation (a question the children may be able to answer, if you pose it to them).
If you have planned a small tour, gather the children and take them to the locations in your congregation that you have scouted. Then return to your meeting space to make posters.
Allow children to work in pairs on posters that require a lot of writing. Some participants like to lavish attention on bold arrows that you can later position around the building so they are pointing toward trash or recycling bins.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Take a few minutes to evaluate the session with your co-leader immediately afterward, while it is fresh. Share your thoughts with any other team teachers and your director of religious education.
You might find it helpful to consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
When one tugs on a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. — John Muir
IN TODAY'S SESSION...
The children heard a true story about unexpected consequences after scientists sprayed DDT in Borneo to get rid of mosquitoes. A chain of subsequent events led to an overpopulation of rats, which was solved by parachuting 20 cats into Borneo. We talked about the importance of balance in nature and made "Live in Balance" posters.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. TALK ABOUT...
Ask your child to tell you about the story and what happened. Talk about the ecosystem your city, town or country location is part of. Discuss the wildlife and plants in your area and the interconnections that exist.
EXTEND THE TOPIC TOGETHER. TRY...
A FAMILY RITUAL
Create a family ritual of going for a night hike whenever there is a full moon. Walk quietly and listen for the night sounds. Note the differences in plant and animal life based on the seasons. When you have returned home, have each person light a candle and name something they appreciate about nature or something they noticed or learned on the hike. Close the ritual with lemonade in the summer, hot chocolate in the winter, mulled apple cider in the fall or another seasonal treat.
A FAMILY GAME
Create an ecological balance version of the traditional game "rock, paper, scissors." In this game, each person secretly decides to be "rock," "paper" or "scissors." Participants count to three with one hand behind their backs. On "three," they pull their hands out front and use their hands to indicate which things they've chosen. A rock is shown by making a fist, paper is a flat hand, and scissors are made in a cutting motion using the index and middle fingers. Rock crushes scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock. Make up your own version using natural food chain relationships. For example: frogs eat mosquitoes, mosquitoes bite humans, and humans eat frogs. Make up hand gestures for each creature you include. Be creative and don't feel constrained by the number three. If you like, add multiple plants or creatures to your game and think about the ways they are interdependent.
FAMILY DISCOVERY
Study the problem of global warming with your family. Your library and the internet will have multiple resources. You can also check out the website of Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth (at www.uuministryforearth.org/), an affiliate organization of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Ask a local energy company to do an audit of your home's energy usage and create a plan for more efficient energy use. Create a family plan to reduce your family's carbon emissions and help stop global warming.
You may like to find out about local nature or ecological organizations in your area. These may have visitor centers, family programs or volunteer opportunities for young school-age children.
Visit a local conservation area and talk to rangers or other workers about local conservation needs. Learn about ways you can help keep the balance in your ecosystem. Possibilities might include planting bushes or flowers that are helpful to insects or birds, reducing your household waste and increasing your recycling efforts, or volunteering with a local environmental group.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: CANDLES OF JOYS AND SORROWS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Determine if your room and building policies allow for open flames. If not, consider doing this activity with a felt board and felt candles or with beads in a jar.
Begin by lighting a "starter" candle. Invite the children to come forward one at a time and light a candle of joy and sorrow from the starter candle and push it into the sand. The child should then face the group and tell them what the candle is for. Translate the language so they understand that we are talking about things that have made them very happy or sad.
Candles of joy and sorrow offer the opportunity for children to experience what is a weekly ritual in many Unitarian Universalist congregations. This activity can deepen sense of community in the Moral Tales group. It gives participants a chance to name those things which they carry in their hearts, encourages listening to others, and, in many cases, makes a link with the adult worship experience.
IMPORTANT: Do not leave burning candles unattended. When all who wish to participate have done so, blow the candles out and put the matches away in a safe place.
Including All Participants
If a child is physically unable to light a candle and stand to address the group, ask the child to invite another child to light a candle for him/her or offer to do it yourself. Allow the child to speak joys and sorrows from where he/she is sitting.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: INTERDEPENDENT WEB GAME (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite the children to sit in a circle. When everyone is settled, hold the ball of yarn in your hand and say:
Hello. My name is (your name).
I love to (something that you love to do).
Holding onto the end of the yarn, pass the ball to someone else in the circle. Greet that person by saying:
Hello, (person's name).
Prompt the person to respond with these words:
Hello.
My name is (person's name).
I love to (something that he/she loves to do).
Instruct the person to hold onto a piece of the yarn, pass the ball of yarn to someone else in the circle, and say:
Hello, (person's name).
The new person holding the ball of yarn repeats the process, saying "Hello," sharing his/her name, and telling something he/she loves to do before passing the ball of yarn along to someone new.
As the ball of yarn gets passed, the yarn will begin to form a web. Encourage children to gently toss the ball of yarn across the circle. If the ball of yarn is only passed and never tossed, no web will form.
When all participants are included in the web, invite everyone to stands up and hold onto their pieces of yarn. Then, gently tug on the yarn you are holding. Ask the group:
Then, drop the yarn you are holding. Ask:
Allow some children to drop their yarn to see what happens. After the children have offered a few observations, tell the group in your own words:
The Earth is a lot like this web. We are connected to everything in our world by a web just like this one — only you can't see the yarn. When we pull on the web or if we break it, all of the other animals and plants feel it, just as you could all feel it when I pulled on this yarn. Just like our web fell apart as some of us began to let go.
That's why we have a Unitarian Universalist principle that says we are all part of the interdependent web of all existence.
This exercise serves multiple purposes. It is fun, and it gives the children a tangible experience of the Unitarian Universalist Principle of interconnectedness along with a chance to practice using one another's names.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 3: HELP OR HARM THE EARTH? GAME (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the children:
Just like the scientists who accidentally created a problem in Borneo, there are lots of things people do that can harm the Earth or mess up nature's balance. There are also things we can do to help the Earth.
Explain that you will read off some actions that people do. Invite the children to move to the "Help the Earth" sign if they think the action you name is helpful or the "Harm the Earth" side if they think it harms the Earth.
Once you exhaust this list, add your own items or ask the children to come up with suggestions. To add action to the activity, you can give the children different ways to move around the room. These might be movements such as crawling, hopping, or tip-toeing, or you can strengthen the lesson by asking them to pretend they are various living creatures such as a frog (hop), a horse (gallop) or a honeybee (fly and buzz).
To end the game, invite two volunteers to remove and throw away or recycle the two newsprint signs and help the Earth.
Including All Participants
Include a child with limited mobility by engaging the group to find a way he/she will indicate the "Help the Earth" or "Harm the Earth" sign, such as by pointing to one sign or the other.
MORAL TALES: SESSION 10:
STORY 1: PARACHUTING CATS TO THE RESCUE
A true story.
The mosquitoes in Borneo were terrible. On bad days, the people of Borneo would be covered in mosquito bites.
(Leader — Ask, "And what do you suppose would happen?" Wait for someone to suggest that it would itch and people would scratch / make the bites bleed.)
That's right — those mosquito bites made them itch and scratch like mad. (Leader — Act out scratching and invite the children to do the same.)
The itching made them uncomfortable, but the real problem with the mosquitoes was that they carried a sickness called malaria. This meant that sometimes the people who got bitten by mosquitoes would get really sick or even die.
Scientists from an agency called the World Health Organization wanted to stop the people of Borneo from getting sick and dying from malaria. They decided to do something about those mosquitoes. They sprayed a chemical called DDT all around the villages of Borneo, because they knew that would kill the mosquitoes. It worked. The mosquitoes died and the people stopped catching malaria.
Everything seemed fine, but what the people didn't know at first was that the mosquitoes weren't the only insects that the DDT had killed. Some wasps died, too. These were parasitic wasps whose larvae ate caterpillars. Without the wasps there wasn't balance in the ecosystem. Because they were not there to eat the caterpillars' larvae, the caterpillar population began to grow and grow. More and more caterpillars were born and they were hungry. They ate and they ate and they ate.
The problem was, the people of Borneo lived in houses with thatched roofs made out of grasses. (Leader — Ask, "What do you suppose those caterpillars liked to eat?" When someone suggests the roofs, continue with the story.)
That's right, the caterpillars ate holes in the thatched roofs and soon the roofs began to fall in. The people of Borneo replaced the roofs, but ... (dramatic pause) there was an even bigger problem to deal with.
The wasps weren't the only insects that ate the DDT. Cockroaches and other insects did, too. So, the cockroaches and other insects began to get sick. And these insects were the food for Borneo's small lizards, the geckos. The more cockroaches and other insects the geckos ate, the more DDT got inside the geckos. The geckos started to die, too.
And the geckos of Borneo were eaten by cats. (Leader — Ask, "What do you suppose happened to the cats?" When someone suggests they died, continue the story.)
That's right, the cats began to die. But even worse ... (dramatic pause) the cats were important because they killed rats. When the cats died there wasn't balance in the ecosystem. There were not enough cats to kill the rats. So the rat population of Borneo grew and grew. The rats began to overpopulate. More and more rats were born.
The trouble with rats is that — just like mosquitoes — they often carry serious diseases which people can catch from them. Now the people of Borneo worried that they might have an outbreak of the plague or another illness that could kill lots of people. (Leader — Ask, "What do you suppose they did?" and take a few answers.)
The people of Borneo realized they needed more cats to bring back the balance in their ecosystem. Some were borrowed from neighboring villages but they still needed more. And that is why in 1959 members of the British Royal Air Force flew over Borneo in a helicopter and sent 20 cats in parachutes to the ground. Can you imagine that? Twenty cats in parachutes — all because nature got out of balance.
(Leader — Use the sound instrument to signify that the story has ended.)
MORAL TALES: SESSION 10:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: HELP OR HARM THE EARTH?
Call out these human actions, your own ideas, and ideas suggested by the children to play the game in Alternate Activity 3, Help or Harm the Earth? Game.
FIND OUT MORE
For more information on Unitarian Universalist efforts to heal the environment, visit the Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth (at www.uuministryforearth.org/)online.
Explore the green sanctuary movement, an outgrowth of the Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth, and how it is practiced at local congregations such as the Unitarian Church of Evanston (at ucevanston.org/ministries/green-sanctuary.html)(IL).
This session's central story, "Parachuting Cats to the Rescue," is true. However, multiple versions are more, or less, credible. Some sources claim that 40,000 cats were parachuted. In contrast, the log book of Borneo's Royal Air Force was the source for the more plausible number of 20 cats. There is also a book written about this event, Day They Parachuted Cats on Borneo by Charlotte Pomerantz (Addison Wesley Longman, 1971).