DR. SEUSS AND UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS
THE LORAX (7-8 Years)

(NOTE: Please review the Introduction before using this Session Plan. Thank you.)

SETTING THE STAGE
STORY SYNPOSIS: The Once-ler traded the forest for business opportunities with dire results. Can the environment be saved? (10 minutes)

AFFIRMATIONS: We take care of our universe.

THEME: Conservation

PREPARATION: Ponder your own perspective of environmental concerns, local or global.

NEEDED: The Lorax, Random House, 1971
Seeds, pots and dirt
Information on environmental projects
Access to the song used in Closing (Circle of Song, Kate Marks, Full Circle Press, 1993)
or Songs for the Earthlings, Julie Forest Middleton, Emerald Earth Publishing, 1998)
SESSION PLAN
OPENING: Selected by the group. This can be used each session.

CHECK-IN: Welcome. Each person says his or her name. Allow time for each person to briefly tell something that went well since the group last met, or something that did not go well.

Leave an empty chair or space for someone who is missing from the group that day, or to recognize that others are welcome to be invited to join the group.

STORY
The Lorax
Option: Reading the story in the grove of trees or a place that will make an environmental statement might enhance the impact of the story.

EXPLORING:
Exercise
Starting with participants crouched or sitting on the ground/floor, pretending to be seeds for a tree.
Slowly begin to get up to standing. Stretch arms as high as possible over head, as branches. Move arms slowly as swaying branches in the breeze.
Have one participant tap the others, one at a time. As each person is tapped, s/he falls to the floor/ground and stays still. When everyone is on the ground, except the "chopper," wonder if the trees will ever grow again.
Each person can call out something that is needed for him/her to grow again (clean air, clean water, sun, no more cutting like just happened) and then sit up.

Reflection
How long did it take for the trees to grow (stretching) compared with the cutting (falling)?

If you had the only Truffula seed given to you, what would you do?
(Encourage response from each participant.)

Options:
  1. Plant seeds for each participant to take home or to have in the space where the sessions are held. Discuss what is needed: good soil, water (not too much or too little), sunlight. (In spite of good care, not all plants survive.)
  2. Discuss endangered species of plants and animals. Discussion of the destruction of the rain forests of South America would show parallels between the story and reality.
  3. Discuss and take part in a local environmental project.
CLOSING
Use a chant or song that includes caring for the environment, such as "The Earth is Our Mother" (Circle of Song p.27, or Songs for the Earthlings p. 23) or "My Roots Go Down (Circle of Song p.75, or Songs for the Earthlings p. 25)

GROUP REVIEW AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
What did they like about the session? (theme, activities, someone special being there, etc.)

Announce the story for the next session and who will be the adult facilitator, or if there are special events in the time before they meet again.

© Rev. Helen Zidowecki, May 2003