Panda Loves Sign Language

Panda learned Sign Language from Eagle Child. See the Eagle Child doing Sign Language of the Magical Earth Secrets

1. I 2. AND 3. THE EARTH 4. ARE 5. ONE	1. I 2. LOVE 3. THE EARTH 4. I (same as 1) 5. WILL CARE 6. FOR THE EARTH

The story of Dodo Land was performed for many years in New York as a theatre production. Magical Earth Secret had sign language in the performance I have many memories of working with the hearing impaired children of Ontario. I was reminded of this recently when two things happened. I saw the web site on the internet called Deaf World Wide Web and and I was lucky enough to work with a hearing impaired student, John, in Ontario , who was one of our Dodo Land guides at Runnymede. From the library he shows other students in the school around
" Dodo Land in Cyberspace" on the computer. John created the Sun Lion in our latest "Protect the Earth" issue #2 of Dodo Land.

My friend, Alice Brownlee translated the story into sign language. Myself, Dale, Alice, Tedrian, and Merian toured three schools in Ontario in l982. Each child and teacher made their own bird helmet so they could visit all the fantastic characters and places in the story. With creative movement Tedrian Chizak and Merian Soto from New York, we had the students ride in the crystal cup, move with the dodo, dance with the Flamingo, meet the Bee and take a trip to Dragon Ship and Island of Eyes.

The children were involved in several painting activities. They did life size tracings of their bodies and inside painted imaginary symbols, shapes, colors, birds, animals plants and flowers to create the most fantastic paintings. We were often told when we came to a school, the children would not be as creative and may not understand us. This proved not to be true and we found the students to be highly creative and the work proved to be some of the most imaginative we have seen.

When the Environmental Activity Guide was published we included signing of the secrets. In my storytellings I still today sign the secrets and have the children in the audience join me. Hope you will join in learning this beautiful and poetic language. Della Burford - author, painter and storyteller.