Gilchrist Elementary Celebrates Arrival of Whooping Cranes to Florida

This week we return to our crane flyway in the eastern United States to celebrate the Florida arrival of the 14 ultra-light led Whooping Cranes in the Class of 2008. We received an email from Gilchrist Elementary School in Tallahassee, Florida, who shared how they are welcoming the Whooping Cranes to neighboring St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge. The students, with the aid of artist Dan Dancer from "Art For the Sky" created a Whooping Crane image on their school grounds by standing together in the shape of a crane (each dot on the crane's body is a student or teacher wearing white or black - also notice the students forming the border around the crane!). Photo by Bob O'Lary

The Gilchrist student's art is an important reminder of our responsibility to protect the wetlands that the Whooping Cranes depend upon in Florida and along the entire flyway north to Wisconsin. On February 2, students throughout the world will celebrate World Wetlands Day, an annual celebration supported by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (an international treaty for wetland protection). The theme of this year's celebration is "Upstream-Downstream: Wetlands Connect Us All." Click here to download a World Wetland's Day poster, brochure, do-it-yourself frog, 20 questions for kids and teachers, and wetlands comics.

Ramsar has also released a new video, “Wetlands: keeping our planet alive and well." The long version is about 4.5 minutes, and the short version is about 1.5 minutes. The files are in QuickTime .MOV format (click here to download the free QuickTime software). Click on he links below to view the video (you may need to wait a few moments while the video is downloading, but it should start playing automatically if you have QuickTime on your computer).

Long version English (30MB) http://www.ramsar.org/ramsar_video_2008_long_e.mov
Short version English (12MB) http://www.ramsar.org/ramsar_video_2008_short_e.mov

Long version Spanish (30 MB) http://www.ramsar.org/ramsar_video_2008_long_s.mov
Short version Spanish (12 MB) http://www.ramsar.org/ramsar_video_2008_short_s.mov

Classroom Art Projects

Earlier this year we introduced you to the Xianghai Middle School art club in northeast China and their summer mural project (check out our story, Crane Art Six Meters Long...Brings Students Together). The Xianghai students worked with artist Val DuBasky, founder of Art in a Box, to design and create the mural. Art in a Box has recently introduced their Young People's Online Gallery, which showcases artwork from the Xianghai students and other students that they work with throughout the world. Click on the following links to view the Three White Cranes artwork in the gallery:

Xianghai Middle School mural project

Chinese and Russian student notecard project
These notecards were created by students from the Xianghai Nature Reserve and Muraviovka Park in southeastern Russia. You may purchase a set of six notecards featuring this artwork through the ICF Gift Shop.

Chinese student field guide project
This artwork was created by students during the 2008 summer environmental camp at the Keerqin Nature Reserve in Inner Mongolia, China.

We hope that after viewing this online art that you and your students are inspired to design your own classroom mural or wetland art project. To get you started, click on the link below to download a template for creating your own Siberian Crane flock. Each sheet is designed to make two Siberian Cranes. To create the cranes, simply make copies of the template and cut out the five pieces for each crane. The two sides for the cranes' body and legs can be glued or stapled together. Note that for younger students we recommend adding a quarter inch of white space around the legs before they cut out these sections.

This paper crane template was designed by the Iranian National Coordination Unit of the UNEP/GEF Siberian Crane Wetland Project (SCWP), an international project to conserve the Siberian Crane flyways in Eurasia.

Siberian_Crane_template.pdf