The Book
I chose this book just because it spoke to me in its unadorned beauty and interconnectedness.
It is an intelligent, poetic story and beautifully illustrated. See the Booklist review below.
| The life of a plastic bag in a landfill is extraordinarily uneventful and long 15,000 years, give or take a few millennia but in this former U.S. poet laureate's first picture book, a beige grocery bag serves an array of inventive uses in but a tiny sliver of that life span. Set against a barren plains landscape, Kooser's circular story follows a plastic bag, the color of the skin of a yellow onion, as it travels in a chain of happenstance from landfill, to tree, to stream, and among the various citizens of a nearby town, including a young girl, a homeless man, and a shopkeeper. The muted, dappled colors of Root's gouache and watercolor illustrations are a perfect complement to Kooser's lengthy, meditative passages, which celebrate not only the virtues of economy and ecology but, moreover, the interconnectedness of all things. An excellent opener for discussions about creative reuse and recycling, the book concludes with an informational author's note.--McKulski, Kristen Copyright 2010 Booklist |
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
The book size was a little smaller than I typically use. I planned to use our real life projector (Elmo Document Projector) to display the images, but there were only a handful of kids registered so I didn't need to be concerned with that. It was very intimate.
Audio and Visual
When the children arrived I showed them a youtube video from the movie American Beauty "the bag scene"
 My Wind Playlist Windy by The Associations
Candle in the Wind by Elton John
Breezin' by George Benson Gentle Breeze Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson: Mary had a little Amp In and out the Window by Old Town School of Music: Songs for Wiggleworms Blow me Down The Wiggles Wiggly Wiggly World Blowin' in the Wind by Peter, Paul and Mary Craft: Plastic Bag Flowers The first craft was making flowers from plastic bags and chenille sticks. 
Bojangles donated bags for the project. I made a petal template and traced it on to the bags.
I cut 5 petals for each flower. The flowers were easy for the children to make. All you have to do is poke the chenille stick through the base of the petal then turn the flower upside down and wrap the petals in tape around the stem.
I also cut out the graphic circles from a Gymboree bag. They poked a hole in the middle of the circle, more circles were layered on and then taped as above.
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Parachutes!!
I pre-cut very thin plastic trash bags for the parachute. I measured 12" of cotton string and cut 4 pieces for each parachute. I folded the plastic into quarters and marked them with a dot.
Round stickers were the string's adhesive. The strings were then gathered and pulled into a knot. The girls were able to do this easily. A wooden clothespin was clamped for the weight, and could be decorated to look like a person. The plastic parachute can also be decorated with markers, but we ran out of time. The parachutes fall beautifully.
12" plate on a folded plastic trash bag.
 
Wrap up
The parachutes got some air time at the end while we continued to listen to the music.
I handed out a BLOW POP at the end.
I
Recycle, Reuse, Re-purpose. The parents took interest in the theme and the children enjoyed the program and embraced the story of a plastic bag.
One parent said that she will never look at plastic bag the same way again.
The total cost for this program was under $3.00 for the Blow Pops.
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