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Bring the show to your community! Maureen will bring a slide show of the exhibition, sharing teachings about the paintings and extraordinary stories and anecdotes about the children who created the exhibition. Maureen is also available for workshops on the theme of Conflict Resolution Through Humor and Art, Teaching Reading and Writing through Humor, Joke Writing for Children, Teen-Agers and Adults and Peace through Humor. Slide show of the Peace Through Humor exhibitionSharing teachings about the paintings and extraordinary stories and anecdotes about the children who created the exhibition. This presentation will inspire and give hope and concrete ideas for how humor can be the bridge between cultures and conflict. 2 hour program with slideshow - $500 plus travel expenses WORKSHOPS:Joke Writing for Children
Joke Writing for Children (ages 5-12)Joke Writing for Young Adults (ages 13-17)Well known educator and author, Maureen Kushner, is now offering a variety of joke writing workshops. Joke writing stimulates children to read and write. It encourages creative, logical, sequential and critical thinking. The following workshops are designed specifically to help children develop these skills. In these interactive workshops children will learn how to create original joke books, cartoons, skits, humorous stories and comic strips. 1 Hour Workshops - $200
1 ½ Hour Workshops - $250
3 Hour Workshop - $400
Teaching Reading and Writing through HumorHumor is a great incentive for reading and writing. In addition to enjoyment, humor is a catalyst for logical, sequential, critical and creative thinking. We will explore how children can develop their language skills, word play, vocabulary, comprehension and the ‘aha-ha-ha' connection by utilizing their natural sense of comedy. In this highly interactive workshop, we will analyze different categories of jokes from ‘Knock-Knock's to ‘How's your Job?' Participants will learn how to create a model of a Comedy Club for Children which includes writers, comedians, cartoonists, designers, calligraphers, editors, critics and colorists. Examples of several Kids' Comedy Club projects such as ‘The Cartoon Parade for Peace,' ‘Say Nope to Dope,' ‘Catch the literacy Bug.' and ‘Ecolodeons: Cartoons and Environmental Visions' will be shared. This concept has captured the hearts and minds of children and teachers in New York City where it was originated and has been an enormous academic success.
Conflict Resolution Through Humor and Art"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people." This workshop focuses on resolving conflicts by nurturing our sense of humor and comic vision. Humor reduces stress and diffuses tension. It balances, encourages cooperation and allows us to look at conflict situation through another perspective. We'll deal with issues which affect children at school - peer pressure, low self-esteem, putdowns, gossip, stereotyping, drugs, etc. through empathetic listening or ‘putting ourselves in each others shoes.' We'll brainstorm how to transform conflict situations into constructive resolution, negative talk into positive affirmation, lose-lose and win-lose situations into win-win situations. Emphasis for all activities will be on the visual art, cartooning, comic strips, role-playing, storytelling and poetry. This workshop is designed for both students and/or teachers. It will include a hands-on art project which will integrate conflict mediation with humor. Examples of several successful projects such as ‘Animating Words of Peace and war,' ‘Flowers and Children,' ‘Joke Writing for Beginners,' ‘Celebrating Words of Loving-Kindness,' ‘The Iroquois Great Tree of Peace,' ‘Listen-Up,' ‘The Rainbow Party' and ‘Peace, Peace, Forever, Ever, Angry, Angry, Never Never' will be shared.
Projects for PeaceApproaches to an Integrative Curriculum through Cultural Diversity
This workshop explores creative techniques to integrate intuitive, moral and aesthetic values into the elementary school curriculum through a variety of multi-cultural projects. It provides several methods that can be used to teach the importance of peacemaking, vision and heroism to children and ways to create a cooperative, colorful and peaceful environment in the classroom. We will demonstrate how role models such as Martin Luther King and Johnny Appleseed and symbols such as the Iroquois Great Tree of Peace can provide a vehicle for exploring the theme of peace in a way that integrates many areas of the curriculum. In this workshop, participants will design a hands-on project which will integrate art, poetry and storytelling with an original theme of peace.
Learning Through LaughterThe Kids' Comedy Club
Maureen formed the Kids' Comedy Club at a bilingual, inner-city school in New York City in order to reach the children, many of whom were restless, unmotivated and lacking the most basic skills. Aware that kid respond easily to humor, she developed ‘learning through laughter' as a way of helping them fall in love with learning. The students' creative abilities took tremendous leaps as they integrated their humor with important social issues: drug abuse, illiteracy, pollution, violence. Of the children who have been in the Club, 90% have gone on to achieve in the top 10% nationally in both reading and math. The students in the Club have produced 15 shows and 19 books (Whoopi the Whooper, the first book, was created after a visit to see Whoopi Goldberg's HBO recording, at her invitation). This workshop will explore how children's natural sense of comedy can be developed and used as an incentive to reading, writing and creative thinking. Maureen will also discuss humor as a classroom management technique and will introduce you to her fascinating model Kids' Comedy Club.
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