Resources

Petar's Song: Ideas

Read the story to the class, taking plenty of time to explore the pictures. Let the children respond to the book, and explore what the author might have been trying to say. Compare the two end papers for a clue.
Ask the children to retell the main events story in pairs. After doing it verbally, they could go on to record it in pictures or words, or as a news article for TV or front page of a newspaper.
Introduce the idea that Petar and his family are refugees, seeking asylum in another country because they are not safe in their own home.
As a class, try to think of six things that were important to Petar. Discuss why these might be important. Ask the children to think of six things that are important to them, and why, e.g. certain things might remind them of a particular event or person in their life. These could be recorded in a special book.
Petar and his family could only carry a few things with them. What did they take? The children could discuss what five things they would take if they had to leave home like Petar, and why. This could be recorded pictorially. As a class, they could compare what they decided to take. Are there some things that everybody needs, e.g. food and water?
Think about what they would have to leave behind. Discuss in pairs what is important in their lives, using the headings on the 'Leaving Home' sheet. Ask the children to draw one thing to represent each heading, joining them together to make one picture. Then they should turn to the reverse side of the paper and cut it into nine sections as in a jigsaw, demonstrating how refugees' lives are torn apart. This can then be mounted on a larger sheet of coloured paper for display.
'Hot seating': As a class someone takes the role of Petar at the moment when his brother and sister are making Christmas card for their father. The rest of the children ask questions which he must answer in role. They could focus on his memories, thoughts and feelings at that moment, and what his needs and hopes are. This approach could also be used for members of the family at other key moments in the text, particularly at the moment the parents explain to the children that they must leave.
A Family Moment: children explore the thoughts and feelings of all the family individuals during the moment before the children and their mother leave their father behind, based around the illustration in the book. (See 'A Welcome Experience' by Carolyn Herbert).
The children could continue the story, or write a letter to Petar, in role as his best friend from home.
'This sort of thing shouldn't happen to children.' Use the poem, 'If I were President' as a framework for the children's own response, as a class poem or individually.