Earth Day

Earth Day 2010

Our school celebrates Earth Day by designing a dozen or so activities that the students cycle through, dependig on age and interest. These range from demonstrations of worm culture and composting, field trips to our water treatment plant and landfill/baler, drinking water facility, treeplanting, etc. Kids can choose to ride in a fully electric car, make solar powered robots, plant trees, and many other activities. It is pretty much a full day of activities and we culminate with a parade in front of school, everyone wearing goofy hats of recycled materials.

In conjuction with my final project here, my 5th grade class will create a “learning center” on global warming with poster displays, some short video from this course, and some demonstrations. The goal is to produce an age appropriate 15 minute primer on global warming for small groups of kids from 1st to 5th grade. Working in groups of 4, the presenters will trade off so each student is involved in activity.

Our center will consist of 3 concepts:

1) What is global warming?

Create a series of 3 posters showing the greenhouse effect.

2) Why is global warning something to be concerned about?

Show simple images of sea level rising, climate change, food web intreruptions

3) What can we do to help?

Show simple images on what kids and their families can do

We will also have an ongoing demonstration of the effect of global warning on Arctic sea ice:

As a demonstration of th ealbedo effect, we will have two pieces of aluminum, shaped roughtly like the Arctic ice cap on a table. One will be painted white, the other wil be painted dark blue. With a lightbulb representing the sun, it will shine on them both. A thermometer will show temps on each ice cap. Students will be encourage to touch each ice cap to feel the difference.

Example of visual 1

Example of visual 2

Example of visual 3

Here are some of the TD and NASA sources we will use:

1) Global Warming: The Physics of the Greenhouse Effect
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/phy03.sci.phys.matter.greenhouse2/

2) Global Warming: Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/phy03.sci.ess.watcyc.co2/

3) Inuit Observations of Climate Change
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/ipy07.sci.ess.watcyc.inuitobserv/

4) Earth’s Albedo and Global Warming
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/ipy07.sci.ess.watcyc.albedo/

5) Global Climate Change
http://climate.nasa.gov/kids/index.cfm