A Cosmic Education Song for the Montessori Environment — This Pretty Planet

How do you teach young children compassion for others? How do you teach them to take care of the environment and the world around them? How do you teach children that we have only one home, our precious planet earth? One effective method is to appeal to them through song.

A Cosmic Education Song for Circle Time: This Pretty Planet

This pretty planet
Spinning through space
You’re a garden, you’re a harbor
You’re a holy place

Golden sun going down
Gentle blue giant
Spin us around

All through the night
Safe till the morning light
-by Tom Chapin

Tom Chapin and John Forster wrote “This Pretty Planet” in 1996. While it never received air time, this short, simple song has inspired and comforted people all around the world. NASA even played “This Pretty Planet” to wake up the space shuttle Discovery 7 astronauts as they traveled through space!

“This Pretty Planet” is a lovely song for children to sing and lends itself beautifully for singing as a round. You can also easily incorporate sign language or hand motions into the song. And it makes a wonderful addition to your daily Montessori routine.

For further resources from Tom Chapin, visit his Teacher’s Page where has additional song lyrics and activities to help you and your students become better citizens of the earth.

As much as possible, NAMC’s web blog reflects the Montessori curriculum as provided in its teacher training programs. We realize and respect that Montessori schools are unique and may vary their schedules and offerings in accordance with the needs of their individual communities. We hope that our readers will find our articles useful and inspiring as a contribution to the global Montessori community.
© North American Montessori Center - originally posted in its entirety at Montessori Teacher Training on Friday, October 11, 2013.