Mary Miche,Author
Mary is an environmental educator who has worked with children for the past forty years. Mary's career in education is extensive and varied. Drawing from a master's degree in environmental education and a bachelor's degree in music, she created a number of albums of nature/science songs for children. Then she traveled the U.S., giving over a hundred environmental education concerts. She has been invited to speak at numerous teacher conferences including many for Kindergarten teachers. Cengage Learning published her book, Weaving Music into Young Minds, a textbook to train teachers how to fit music into the already full classroom curriculum. She currently offers courses in teacher education through the Center for Professional Development at Fresno Pacific University.
How to use this book with children.
Mary has lots of ideas of how you can you this book with young children. Here are just a few of them.
“How will you help take care of our Earth?” Encourage children discuss this question and draw pictures of themselves helping the earth. They can write sentences describing what they are doing in the pictures. For preschoolers, write a sentence for them.
Go to www.dawnpub.com. to find classroom activities. Click on “Teachers/Librarians” and “Downloadable
Find out about endangered species
Endangered species for each U.S. state are listed at www.endangeredspecie.com. Pick one animal and learn all you can about it. This website suggests ways you can help to preserve or restore a wild habitat near where you live. If you are interested in finding out about endangered species in other countries, visit http://www.earthsendangered.com.
Learn about great environmentalists
The environmentalists pictured on pages 26 and 27 are all chosen from Earth Heroes, a book series from Dawn Publications which contains short, highly interesting biographies of many of the world’s leading naturalists, including stories of their youth.
Earth Heroes: Champions of the Wilderness portrays David Suzuki, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Murie, Wangari Maathai, and John Muir.
Earth Heroes: Champions of the Ocean portrays Margaret Wentworth Owings, Archie Carr, Roger Payne, Eugenie Clark, Sylvia Earle, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and Tierney Thys.
Earth Heroes: Champions of Wild Animals portrays
Jane Goodall, Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling, Rachel Carson, Roger Tory Peterson, Edward O. Wilson, Ronald “RD” Lawrence, and William Temple Hornaday.
Where are the rainforests?
Did you know there are rainforests all over the world? Find pictures and information about tropical rainforests at www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/troprain.html. To learn about temperate rainforests, go to http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/temprain.html .
Musical Accompaniments: Mary Miché has two environmental education recordings: “Nature Nuts” and “Earthy Tunes.” These can be found at www.marymiche.com. The songs from “Nature Nuts” that particularly complement this book are “Nature's Niches,” “Romp in the Swamp,” “All God's Critters,” and “Newts, Salamanders and Frogs.” The songs from “Earthy Tunes” that reinforce the ideas of nature appreciation are “Spiders and Snakes,” “Banana Slug,” “Turtle,” “Six Plant Parts,” and “Bugs in Your Bark.”
Consie is an amazing biological illustrator who has created the art work for numerous children's books.
She creates books for children,
Illustrates scientific publications,
edits, designs, illustrates and occasionally writes the North Carolina WILD Notebook and has created artwork for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the North Carolina Zoo,
Consie was a college art major who discovered how invigorating and romantic Minnesota snow and cold weather can be.
Consie was a graduate student who read hundreds of picture books, and called it her program of study.
Consie is the mom who encouraged a daughter to keep toads as pets. She helped raise fishers and porcupines, and occasionally made road-kill stew.
She loves to paddle a wooden canoe.
Consie is the artist who draws weasels and bugs and dogs and kids and apples and birds and snow and lizards and spiders and clouds and whatever else takes her fancy. She is the freelancer who decided to ignore dog hair and dust.
And Consie is the person who smiles, and follows, when her dog tells her to come outside, find a good stick, and see how lovely life can be.
Consie Powell,
Illustrator
