Creative ideas or projects for making children understand going green.?

Question

Ok my theme for my 8 week childrens summer program is sort of "going green". I would like to incorporate taking care of the environment in general, energy effiecency, natural rescourcesfuel alternatives. I would like to incorporate the following: appriciating nature, outdoor safety, camping, wildlife conservation, animal/plant identification, sun safety, basic first aid for kids.

I am looking for project, topic and feild trip ideas and any other ideas you have, If you have a theme title suggestion, throw it at me, as i am having trouble thinking of a title to tie it all together.

we live in a very rural community in kentucky about an hour from both louisville and lexington. we do not have as many earth friendly programs here as i would like to exhibit to the children but i want to expose them to as much as possible so that they realize what is really going on with the world around us.

any help you can offer would be great.

Answer 1

Re: recycling - even better, have the kids actually participate in recycling by making paper with them out of old newsprint, etc. so they can see what actually happens (on a small scale) to things when they are recycled.

Try not to give the kids the idea that "good" people recycle, don't pollute, etc....and that "bad" people litter, smoke, whatever...just emphasize WHY we choose certain appropriate behaviours

Other ideas:

- patterns: show them examples of different patterns and see if they can think of (or find) places in nature and in the "human" world where they both exist:

       *a spiral: cyclones, shells, a s***w,

       *a branching pattern: trees, rivers, our circulatory system

       *a wave pattern: sound waves, sand dunes

- talk about how to walk "softly" in a forest - ask them what happens when you walk in the forest...you squish plants and bugs, you compact the soil, you break branches, etc.

      *is it better to have many "small" paths of destruction or one "focused" or "big" path that everyone stays on?

      * talk about erosion, and show how paths get bigger if people don't stay on the path, or if water comes down the path

      * maybe see if there is a path that needs to be restored or cleared in your area that the kids can help with

That's all I've got for now!

Answer 2

Here are a few suggestions...The area you live in has such beautiful forests... perhaps helping kids understand how nature combines plants, animals, earth, water, wind and sunshine together, in a particular way to produce the beautiful forests of the area, and then getting them to think about how imbalances of any of those factors would effect the forests in the area.

You could visit a forest, camp out, inventory the plants and animals there. Look at animal trails, try to identify animal tracks, identify where animals and/or insects have browsed on plants, nuts ect... Another thing you could introduce is the idea of soil types, you could find examples of the diferent kinds of soils (sand, clay, loam etc. ) you could expriment with how water flows through the digferent types of soil. You could determine the soil type of the forest you visit, you could also talk about topsoil and subsoil, to do this find a washed out area and look at the soil profile, look at how far into the earth tree roots grow, or grass roots grow, talk about how the tree collects sunshine energy and uses it to hoist up nutrients from deep down, talk about how tree leaves fall on the earth and preserve moisture, and also how the leaves are eaten by various  organisums that then pass the same nutrients into the top soil. Ask if deep rooted plants help shallow rooted plants... Look at bare spots and grassy spots, help the kids discover how grasses shade the earth and conserve moisture. You could look at a creek, turn over rocks, look at creek critters... Where does the water in the creek come from...where does it go? Does it all run off? You could put up a mini weather station, collect and record daily rain samples, high low temperatures, barmetric pressure. Explain how weather circulates with wind paterns according to highs and lows, look at and identify cloud types, look for jet vapor trails...ask the kids if they think clouds shade the earth, does that effect the temperature? do vapor trails shade the earth? Measure plant growth before and after a rain shower. Measure plant growth after a period of dry weather is it the same?  Look at how earth worms work the soil, making it  porus to air and water perculation. Talk about mico-biological organisums, what kinds are they? Talk about how they break down plant debrie into plant nutirents that are taken up by the roots of forest trees and plants. Collect some soil and water samples...rent a microscope and look at the life in forest soil, in pasture soil, in pond water, in clorinated water... examine the microbiological activity of soil from a convetionally farmed field, then from an organic garden,from worm castings.  Have the kids compare the micobiological activities of the various samples and tell in their own words what differences they find.Go to a farm, walk in a pasture, turn over old cow patties and look how the nutrients are being incorporated back into the soil by various organisums. Help the children see how everything in nature is  connected by aking them to find examples of this connectedness from the experience they have had and making posters to show that connectedness. Take the children to a place that has been polluted, have them examine the result of the pollution... and so on.

As to the name I would suggest that you have the kids work together to come up with a name for the program, that will help them identify with the program. It is after all about them and their future.

I think what you are doing is great, be encouraged.

Here are a few examples of what others are doing with kids and living green:

http://www.greenlivingonline.com/Family/...

http://www.childrenoftheearth.org/green-...

http://www.childrenoftheearth.org/Stone%...

http://www.bear-tracker.com/

Answer 3

Here's a dandy!

http://www.starhop.com/Middle/GlobJar-7....

I love these kinds of questions.  These are the people we need to educate.  It's almost impossible to get people to unlearn things they have learned wrong.  I get the idea your students are young.  I wrote this for someone with the same question but older students.  Maybe you'll get something out of it.  Or email me and give me a better idea about your program, and I'm sure I could help.

One thing they'll understand and may have heard of is the change in ocean

levels as the polar caps melt.  You'll hear of people trying to calculate this

which is really kind of silly.  There is a difference in the volume of ice

compared to water but also a difference in the volume of fresh water

compared to salt water.  That makes it a less than straightforward

calculation.  On the other hand, the polar caps have melted before with the

natural glacial cycles, although usually not completely.  The big difference

is before it's taken thousands of years, while it looks like it will take less

than 200 this time.  Anyway the rise has been around 60 meters each time,

and there's an abundance of maps showing it at different epochs.  They

should be able to relate this to current population centers and so forth.  I

also put a link to an article about Mary Anning.  She was a very poor British

child who found the first skeleton of an Icthyosaur in Britain.  She also

found plesiosaurs and Mosasaurs.  As a young woman she was

acknowledged as Britain's foremost paleontologist, even though she had

no formal education.  With the help of her mother she supported her family

in this way.  Near the end of her life she unearthed the first skeleton of a

pterodactyl, the flying dinosaur, only newly discovered at that time.  It is a

wonderful story for children.

The other part is less cheery, but more important.  Early in the earth's

history all the land masses were one giant continent.  Life had made it onto

land and thrived there for the first 300 million years or so after gaining a

foothold.  Large animals similar to dinosaurs had evolved.  Then suddenly,

in only a few thousand years, almost all life vanished, and the main form of

life was once again the single celled green plant, algae.  There have been

other mass extinctions, like the one 60 million years ago that killed off the

dinosaurs, but none that came close to this.  Until recently no one had a

theory that came near explaining this unique event from a natural cause.  

Since the development of computer weather and climate modeling it's been

possible to develop a plausible explanation that most people accept at least

until a better one comes along.

Since the "greenhouse effect" was the only known natural process that

could alter both the land and oceans enough to kill everything it was

chosen as a possible cause.  The  only known source that could provide

enough greenhouse gas and ash was volcanoes, lots and lots of volcanoes.

The computer models allowed the scientists to estimate how much

greenhouse gases, volcanic ash, soot, etc would be needed to reach the

temperature needed for "the great dying", and do it in such a short time

(less than 10,000 years).  This estimate allowed them to estimate how many

volcanoes were needed.  The answer was thousands of volcanoes, several

thousand square miles of them erupting continuously for about 8,000

years.  Interestingly enough, there was a huge area in Western Siberia that

was volcanically active precisely then and for that amount of time.  That

still would only raise the temperature about 1/2 of what was needed to

explain the extinctions.  Then petroleum engineers contributed something

new.  The bottoms of the oceans are littered with methane crystals called

clathrates.  These form when the methane from volcanic vents combines

with water at very cold temperature and high pressure.  They are being

considered as a fuel source if they could be mined.  The temperature rise

from the volcanoes was enough to raise the ocean temperatures to a point

where the crystals began to melt.  They would have rapidly turned to

methane, a strong greenhouse gas.  It would only have required about

another 1000 years to melt them, and the temperature would have doubled

from the level caused by the volcanoes.  The first phase (the volcanoes)

would have killed a lot of life, then the second phase (the clathrates) would

have done the rest.  This scenario fit the climate models and the fossil

record exactly.

Study points

> They may hear people say one volcano creates more greenhouse gases

than all people.  That's plumb silly.

>In just over 100 years humans have released enough CO2, methane, water

vapor, soot, and other greenhouse materials to raise the temperature about

1/2 of what it took thousands of volcanoes thousands of years to

accomplish.

>We have far more industrial activity today than most of those 100 years.

>A good illustration would be to collect or grow some algae.  If you're not

near a stream or lake, just put some water in a jar and leave it on the

windowsill a few weeks.  They can see what the dominant for of life looked

like at the end of the Permian extinction.

>If you have access to an old time light meter like photographers used to

use, you can bounce a beam of light off a mirror and measure it, then do it

with 1,2,3 panes of glass in between to show how the greenhouse affect

creates global warming.  A small hole in a windowshade on a sunny day

works best.

Answer 4

A great way to get kids into the GREEN living, is to have the start recycling cans, plastic and any other paper. Explain to them what each aluminum can could make, what recycled paper can be made into. Reuse as much as you can on camping trips, take metal plates to wash instead of using paper plates, use dead wood for the camp fire and explain why you use it, etc. Camping is a great way to expose children to the great world of nature. As you are in the woods, alot of things will come to you about GREEN, just by being in the great outdoors.

Good luck