Distribute a handout with the following activities

1
Please begin by quietly thinking back to when you were a child and try to envision a perfect summer day.  If you had to take a picture of this day, what would that image look like?  What would you be doing?  Who would you be with?  How would you feel?  And what senses beyond vision would be involved?  Try to distill your thoughts down to one paragraph, as if you had to somehow capture this moment in a single image.           

2
Once you’ve written about your vision of a summer day, turn to a couple of classmates sitting next to you and share your memory and discuss any similarities and differences.  Together, on a large sheet of paper, generate a list of common characteristics of a perfect summer day.  

3
After your group generates a set of characteristics for a perfect summer day, ask each other to imagine an ideal world for children in the future. What would it look like?  Anything like your perfect day?  What would children be doing?  How would children feel in this world?   Ask each other to imagine the things that are essential to ensuring the well being of children in this world you envision.  Together, brainstorm a list of these "childhood essentials."

4
After gathering a list of childhood essentials ask each other, does every child in the world today have all of these things now?  Refer back to your list and ask if these essentials can be considered rights?  It may be necessary to go through the list one by one.  After this discussion, ask each other which essentials should be included in an international convention of rights for children?  Rewrite your ideas as guidelines which would guarantee that all children would share these essentials.                        

5
Examine the legal instrument created by the United Nations - the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Are there any articles in the Convention in relation to your memory of a perfect summer day?   Are there any articles in the CRC that match your vision of a perfect childhood world in the future?   Try to draw parallels to the childhood essentials you brain-stormed as a group. 

6
After this final group activity, a representative from your  group should go to the chalk board and list your childhood essentials which were rewritten into guidelines and their parallel rights from the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Close the workshop with a general discussion of how your  memories, experiences, childhood essentials, and visions are related to the normative standards of human rights for children.

with permission from peter lucas