Falls Brook Gives Kids Hands On Experience

Posted On August 29, 2012

To promote environmental sustainability Paper Mate is sponsoring Tree Canada and Andover Elementary School in a project to plant 26 Maple, Willow and Linden trees on the grounds of the school.
Last week 24 of these beautiful saplings were planted by the staff of Falls Brook Centre, Dave Dunlop and many helpful and excited grade schoolers.
 
Falls Brook Staff also spent the day putting on a terrific educational puppet show and demonstrating how the St John watershed system works using a 3-D model of the River Valley.
 

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Falls Brook Centre teaches sustainability, bio-diversity and habitat preservation. The staff are wonderful and dedicated to the preservation of our beautiful planet, and their commitment and enthusiasm is infectious.
They put on a terrific puppet show to illustrate habitat loss and erosion due to clear cutting.
 

Max the Heron is excited…he’s getting ready to migrate to his winter home of Honduras. He tells Peter the Moose all about the trip, and how lovely the mangoes are down there.
He promises to bring Peter a mango when he returns. He sings a song about flying to Honduras…and heads south.
 

The Moon keeps him company, but when Max arrives in Honduras he’s in for a nasty shock.
The trees have all been clear cut! The mangoes are all gone! Lizzie the Lizard fills him in on all the sad details. Max and Lizzie don’t get it…the clear cutting is so obviously bad for the land, why do humans persist in doing what harms the environment?
 

They explain that now the fish are also gone because the mangrove trees have all been burned for firewood, so the fish lost their habitant among the mangrove roots.
 

Come spring, Max bids Lizzie goodbye and heads back to Canada. He’s in for an even ruder shock when he gets back home….his nest is gone! His own tree has been cut down!
 

The play’s dialog makes clear that no matter where we are on the planet, clear cutting and habitat loss is a big problem.
 

Peter now tells Max that he has to say goodbye now too. He has to head north, to follow the still existing wetlands. (I must confess that your reporter began to choke up at this)
 

The play ends on a note of hope, though. The Moon tells Max that it’s up to him to squawk about the issues, and goes on to tell him about solutions that everyone can help with, like planting trees. The Moon suggests that Max tell everyone between here and Honduras on every trip he makes.
 

One kid exclaimed at the end, “Wow! That was a good puppet show!”
I had to agree with him!
Stephanie Kelley