Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

This week's theme was Recycling and Waste.

How Well Can You Sort?- Intro to Recycling
We started the week by talking about different materials (paper, plastic, glass, metal, styrofoam, etc) that make up products we often use and buy.

Lay out a bunch of items from each category on the floor, make sure they're mixed up. I had some posters with the names of each material also laid out. Next, have the kids sort the materials. This might be too basic for most kids, if they already know what all these materials look like and the differences between them.... but for our age group and background, this was important to help them understand what's the difference between plastic, glass, aluminum, etc.

From there we transitioned into learning the 3 R's, what they mean, and simple ways we can do each in our homes and school.

Some ideas my kids came up with:

Reduce:
Don't buy things with lots of plastic or paper coverings.
Bring your own bags to the grocery store instead of taking the plastic bags
Reduce amount of garbage by recycling and composting properly

Reuse:
Find a second use for tin cans, glass bottles and jars (flower vase, hold pens and pencils, store food)
Use washable plates and cups that can be used over and over.
If you make a mistake while coloring, turn it over and use the other side

Recycle:
Remember to put all plastics and paper in the single stream recycling.

We have composters at our facility so we also were able to talk a little bit about composting too.

Recycled Art 

There are SO many options for recycled art projects. Most of the time our other projects & themes during other weeks involve some form of reusing and recycling materials for art and other activities.

We made a group collage over two days. I got my motivation from this pintrest idea. We didn't end up making any animal silhouettes QUITE like that, but the kids enjoyed trying the different techniques and textures such as

• Rolling the paper- use a pencil to roll it up, then glue the edge right before you finish rolling.
• True collage, as the fish below looks
• Cutting into specific shapes, like the butterfly and tulip
• Cutting out pictures of animals

We used old magazines like Backyard Kids, Ranger Rick, and DEC Conservationist.
Using animals as the theme of the collage allowed me to talk to kids about the impacts of trash on wildlife as well.

 Here's our progress after Day 1:

Papermaking

I had never done papermarking before. It is MUCH EASIER to do than you think.

Things you need:

• Shredded or ripped up paper
• Water
• Blender
• Aluminum trays, or anything that is at least 4-5 inches deep
• Towels.. LOTS of towels!
• heavy items like phone books
• Papermaking kit. We had papermaking tools from a kit similar to the one in the link above. You could probably make or find most of the items...a wood frame, plastic grid, screen (similar to that of a window screen), and a cover screen (usually blue)

Having kids work together in an assembly line fashion is best especially if you don't have enough screens and frames. Have kids each help work at one of these stations

1. Making pulp- blend water and recycled paper. It's really a trial and error to determine consistency, but I noticed you usually needed 1 parts paper, 2 parts water. Pour into trays. You can always add or remove water to the trays at anytime if need be..
2. Place wood frame with screen & grid underneath in water (order from bottom to top: Plastic grid, screen, wood frame). Scoop the water in until the entire frame is submerged. Pull straight out and let water drain.
3. Remove wood frame and place blue cover over paper. This helps press out water (and protect the new paper!). Put these under a towel and fold the towel over and press hard to remove as much excess water. Overtime towels will be soaked, if you don't ring out your towels or switch in dry ones, you won't be able to remove enough water and the paper won't come out as nice. We actually RECYCLED our water by ringing the towels out and using that water to continue making more pulp.
4. Remove the plastic frame and press again- sandwiching it inside a hardy paper. We had these thick papers that were specifically for pressing and drying during papermaking, once they dry they become sturdy again and can be reused. However, they were getting very old and the kids weren't doing a good job removing most of the water in the step before... so they got drenched and torn. We found an alternative: construction paper worked well.
5. Use some sort of materials mentioned above to continue pressing as much water out as possible. Use something heavy like phonebooks on top to make one final effort to remove water. 
6. Carefully remove recycled paper and place somewhere to dry.

 This first photo shows what they looked like at the end of the day (not completely dry yet) The second picture is the next day. As you can see, they do get a bit wrinkly, but most came out pretty great. The final picture shows some example of kids who did not do a great job removing all the way. Not only did these take much much longer to dry, but the texture is much coarser. When moving newly made paper to the drying table, the ones with excess water were much more delicate and easily tore.

Matching Game
Another simple game we played was matching the reusable item with the non-reusable or less environmentally friendly. Some examples are throwaway plates and cups vs ceramic or reusable, plastic bag vs canvas bag, Starbucks coffee cup vs travel mug, tiny individual salt and mustard packets vs bottles and large bags, paper napkin vs cloth napkin, paper towel vs cloth towel.

Other Useful Visuals
Taking kids to a local recycling  or waste disposal facility was my goal, unfortunately they can't accommodate a tour in the afternoons.

For passive learners, I had some reading materials and posters about the process of waste disposal, recycling, and tips for recycling.

We also read the book, "The Great Trash Bash"

Water, Water, Water!

This week has been an intro to water- the 3 phases of water, the water cycle, and water pollution. Here is a set of different activities we've been doing all week:

Earth's Drinking Water Supply
About 70% of earth is covered in water, but how much of that is actually fit for human consumption? Despite being a renewable resource, the amount of drinkable water on earth is very limited!

A great visual demo is to take 1 L (1,000 ml) of water to represent all the water on earth and compare it to the amount of clean, freshwater.

1. Ask kids where they think most water on earth is located (oceans). 97% is saltwater from the oceans. Explain why this is not drinkable. Remove 97% of water (970 ml) which leaves you with 30 ml.
(hint: it is easier just to pour out 30 ml into a smaller container. I reused old plastic containers and marked off the measurements so that kids can pour and measure themselves. You could also use measure cups if you want the kids to practice understanding measurements)

2. Explain that the 30 ml represents freshwater. Where is freshwater found? (lakes, rivers, streams, our faucets, the ground, and GLACIERS!) Depending on age, most kids won't think of glaciers or know what they are.

3. Explain glaciers make water inaccessible and take away 24 ml. You are left with 6 ml that represent the other sources of freshwater. Some of these are polluted waterways... and some are hard to get to like deep groundwater.

4. Use a pipette to take out a single drop- the amount of drinkable water (0.003%) Conclude by talking about water consumption and conservation in the home and school.



Water Cycle in a Bag
I found an example of this on Pinterest. So far it has worked moderately well considering we haven't had the sun out very much in the past few days.Since we have TONS AND TONS of snow, we started by putting snow in the bags, so in addition to the evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, we also witnessed the melting process! You can't see very well but there was actually some foggy condensation near the top of these bags at the time.

The Incredible Journey

This very popular Project Wet Activity  teaches kids the movement of water, places it goes, and where it stays the longest. Children imagine they are all water droplets. By rolling dice at each of the nine stations, they are directed on where they should travel next. To document their journey, everyone starts with a pipe cleaner and collects a colored bead at every station they go to. By the end, everyone has a bracelet to take home and you can sit the kids down to talk about patterns or frequency of colors in their bracelet.

Talking points:

• Every droplet has a unique journey, no two bracelets are the same
• Sometimes water droplets stay in one place for a very long time (i.e. ocean or atmosphere)
• Some places only collect small amounts of water and remove it fairly quickly, meaning some kids may never have get to that station or maybe only once (i.e. plant, animal)

Tips/Lessons Learned:

• You can use any string in place of pipe cleaners, however pipe cleaners are best because the beads stay on very well as the kids move around and no need to keep tying knots at the end of the string.
• Make sure you have enough beads in EVERY COLOR, even the ones that the probability of getting are very low. I used left over beads and assigned colors based on which beads I had the least and most of with the respective stations that should be reached most often or least often. Don't rely on that. I almost ran out of black beads for my animal station!
• Explain to the kids ahead of why certain dice don't have all the pictures on them (i.e water from the ocean cannot go straight to groundwater, it must first travel through other places) If you have kids with OCD or ADHD this might frustrate them, and they'll probably begin "cheating" to go to the stations they haven't been able to reach.
• This is the PERFECT activity for an after-school program or other public events & festivals or programs where kids can drop in and out as they please. This activity does not require all kids to stop and start at the same time, everyone works at their own pace, and the activity can be continued on for a long time (they can make multiple bracelets) or shorter time.

Solid-Liquid-Gas Tag
This is a game I made up. The goal is to teach kids how fast water molecules move when in different phases.
I took two flashlights and covered them with red and blue material. If you have flashlights with colored bulbs that probably works better. Otherwise test out different materials over your flashlight. Depending on the intensity of your flashlight, certain materials may work better than others. Colored cellophane, ribbon, or other thin fabrics will probably suffice.

Rules:
The tagger has the two flashlights. The red light represents heat from the sun and the blue is cold temperatures. Teach kids that as ice molecules they barely move, they vibrate a little in place but for the most part everyone should be frozen still and close together. As ice melts, molecules begin to spread apart.. kids can start to slowly walk around each other. As water evaporates it enters the gas stage: everyone can start to run and spread out. Point the colored flashlight on each kid to "tag" them. Keep going back and forth between the stages.

A few things I quickly discovered.... after a while they kids will ask if they can be the tagger. Once that happened we lost the concept of having to shine the same colored light more than once on a person to get them from solid to gas or visa verse. We essentially lost that liquid step and it became a traditional freeze tag, everyone was either frozen or running. But most of the kids playing with me that day were Kindergartners and for their age level they did pretty well, especially in the beginning when I was in control of the lights. It helps, especially if you let other kids become the tagger, to call out what stage we are in. The whole time I was narrating, "you turned to ice"", ""the sun melts you, you are a liquid", etc. We also had a couple older kids (3-4th grade) join us later on. They were a bit more rambunctious. You might want to make additional rules like you cannot hide behind or under things, no pushing, etc. Obviously this activity is best outdoors, we were inside, what helped me keep them under control was to set boundaries that no one could step out of.




Songs About Water
There are tons of great videos and songs about water and the water cycle. Here are some I used or particularly like:

Who made this mess?
We ran out of time to do this activity because of all the snow days but learned it at a educator workshop and I really love it.

Tell kids everyone has an infinite amount of money to build their dream home and and property which sits along the Hudson River (or another relevant water body in your area). Give everyone a piece of paper to draw their house (make sure you remind them to place water at the edge of their property! AKA bottom of the page). When complete, place all the houses facing into each other so that there is the river in the middle. Talk about the sources of pollution that could be entering the river. I suggest you make your own as well. You could draw yours one of two ways: make it really crazy and include things that would cause pollution that the kids may not have thought of like a a zoo or farm and factory. OR make yours a representative of a Sustainable Shoreline- one that is environmentally conscious and  helps protect.
Pick a downstream and upstream location and begin asking each kid to explain what is on their property, as kids mention things that contribute to pollution use pompoms, string, or even ripped up pieces of paper to demonstrate pollution sources entering the river. Talk about what happens to the water downstream of pollution.

Common sources:

• Oil from cars, boats, planes, etc
• Chemicals from pools, hot tubs
• Fertilizers from perfect green grass and gardens
• Other chemicals or sewage from far-fetched things like factories, farms,  restaurants, shopping stores (YES kids will think to put these on their imaginary property!!)
• Trash, bottles, cans

Glacier Ice vs. Ocean Ice
I also didn't have time for this one, but I hope to tie it into a climate change week instead.

Fill two bowls with water. Place ice directly in one. In the second use something like a smaller bowl upside down to simulate an island or land. Place ice cubes on top of the land. Have kids measure the water level in both. Place under a lamp or in the sun. Return to when the ice has melted and have the kids measure water levels again. Talk about the difference between land and sea ice melting.



Water Quality Testing
I love the LaMotte Water Monitoring Kits. I've used them at numerous places that I've worked. They are very simple to use, just pipette water into the tubes, put in the tablets for the parameter you want to test for (DO, pH, phosphate, etc), shake, and compare colors to the chart provided in the kits.  If you have older kids (middle school and high school) you might want to look into better testing kits, but for young kids (K-3) this is perfect for helping them understand the basics of healthy vs unhealthy water for fish.

Because I mostly cater to K-2 we prepared for water quality tests by coloring in these Hudson River Activity Books from NYS Dept. of Health. Here is a PDF copy but you can easily get some hard copies by contacting them. I like these books because they touch on the concept of water quality and impacts to fish and humans. It got them thinking and talking about fish and prepare for our water tests we did after snack.

I ALWAYS like to have a white board nearby when I do these tests in order to have kids 'record' our findings. In past instances, I've always collected a water sample from the Hudson. Because everything frozen and also impossible for me to easily access and natural water bodies from our center, I brought it some water from my fish tank. This worked out really well because I proposed a "mystery that needed to be solved." As many of my kids knew, I recently got some guppy fish, and a couple have not been doing well. We conducted a couple of the tests and found that my D.O. is very low! Looks like I need a better aeration system!

Now I'm almost positive our results aren't accurate, because of a couple different mess ups, however the key was to get them to understand what influences healthy water, what dissolved oxygen and pH is, and what the safe ranges are for fish to survive.

Reptile & Amphibian Challange

All the snow days are really throwing us for a loop here! But we finished up last week's theme on Tuesday with some activities that tested our memories of what we learned about amphibians and reptiles.

We started with a fact matching game. I created a set of animal traits and features that belong to turtles, snakes, and/or frogs. Children had to read the facts and decide which of these animals matches the description. For example, "I lay my eggs in water" would be the frog. "I am a reptile" would be turtle and snake.

I let the kids try to figure out the answers on their own or talk it out with their buddies. They then had to write the fact on a piece of paper and stamp the paper with the appropriate animal stamps. We had a lower number of kids at the center today because of snow, but the kids really enjoyed this activity and it was great for helping recap all the things about frogs, turtles, and snakes that we learned last week.

Since the snow impacted the number of kids who came today, I went ahead an stamped a couple extra sheets without the facts written. I'll have these ready so the kids who missed out can still contribute to the project, but I've just simplified the steps for them (and eliminated the need to take the paints out again!)

I also had a short craft- turtles and turtle habitats. We used egg cartons (cut up) as the shell of the turtle and then gave kids creativity and flexibility to draw an appropriate habitat surrounding the turtle, many kids made sea turtles swimming in the ocean or coming up on the beach, we also had some out-of-the-box thinkers use the egg carton to make a frog body instead of turtle shell!

Check our our hallway of frogs, snakes and turtles!!

Because numbers were on the lower side, it was a perfect day to take out the bearded dragon, JJ. It was my first time taking him out, Interestingly, despite all the begging I've been getting to take the lizard out, I was the only one willing to hold JJ for more than 5 seconds! This is really my first experience with reptile animal handling, so its a bit of a new adventure and small learning curve.... for example, I really need to figure out how to prevent him from getting sand EVERYWHERE!

Classroom Improvements

As we wait for our environmental center to be renovated, I use a kitchen and back room at the community center to run my programs. The spaces I have (and don't have)  make it challenging, especially because some kids do not come to the after school program necessarily because they want to do environmental activities. I've been trying to build up the self-directed education options in the back room so that kids who aren't interested in taking part in a full lesson (usually in the kitchen) can always wander back here with something new and engaging to see....

That being said, I'm trying to develop a touch table that changes weekly with the theme, or possibly displays items from the week before in order to give the kids that don't come everyday a chance to see some of the things they missed.

Second thing I started is a nature observations bulletin board. The kids are allowed to play outside after snack, depending on weather. For the last few days I've had kids running inside to bring me bird feathers they've found outside. This gave me the motivation to think of a way to acknowledge their discoveries. 

I had already created a general observation sheet when we were doing our bird week. My hope is kids will follow my lead (I already had one child do so) especially as we enter spring and see regrowth of nature!!

Life Cycles and Intro to Amphibians

To continue with Reptile and Amphibian week, today I had a few activities to introduce amphibians and talk about animal life cycles.

I set up two sensory bins. A bowl of water to represent a pond and a tray of sand to represent a beach or dirt. I placed tiny frog and turtle figurines in eggs and placed them in the appropriate location that each animal lays their eggs.




The kids had a blast with this, but its definitely important to have a backup activity to switch to right after otherwise they will just want to make a mess with the sand and water. Also, a tip on sand, we happened to have something on handed called therapeutic sand, if you're worried about sand being too messy, definitely look into this. It was firmer and didn't stick to the kids hands as much as normal sand.

This activity helped transition well into talking about the differences and similarities between amphibians like frogs and reptiles like turtles. We did a frog life cycle craft to learn about the process of metamorphosis.

We also spent some time learning the names of common turtle/tortoise species, sea turtles, and salamanders. I laminated some great guides from the NYSDEC which open up to show a picture on one side and descriptions on the other side. We played guessing games where I (and sometimes they) would describe a particular species and we had to look at the pictures guess which one it was.

Turtle Talk

Today started a new week and thus a new theme: Amphibians and Reptiles. Our nature classroom currently has two animals, a greek tortoise and a bearded dragon. We will be getting more as we finish renovating our new Hudson River themed environmental center right next door.

We spent a short time after snack talking about common NY turtles and our turtle, Mateo, who was given a rare opportunity to spend some time outside his tank. Each child was given a chance to hold the turtle (after proper handling directions). I was very impressed with my kindergarten and first graders who were quick to explain to me the difference between a turtle and tortoise (water vs land dwelling). After a week of animal in winter activities, the kids were also very inquisitive about where turtles go in winter ( in mud or dig burrows). We spent time discussing other interesting facts about turtles

• They are reptiles, although commonly thought to be amphibians
• The shell is called a carapace
• Babies hatch from eggs
• Water dwelling turtles have webbed feet

Observations as we fed Mateo:

• A turtle/tortoise can reach their neck out far when reaching for food
• Turtles do not have teeth, instead they have a beak to help break up food

Live animals can either be a big hit or really boring to kids, it all depends on the animals behavior and the kids'moods that day. Today turned out not to be quite a homerun, however some other show and tell pieces such as a turtle skeleton, carapace of two tortoises, and a jaw bone of a snapping turtle really helped keep them engaged.

In my experience with EE, visuals and physical things kids can experience and hold is always more effective than making them sit and listen to a teacher talk.

Hibernation

To end our animals in winter week, we did a fun arts and craft project to test our memory on different animals in winter we've learned about so far.
I really like this activity sheet (found HERE ) because it highlights some animals that are true hibernators, migrators, and some that we can occasionally see or see tracks of in winter. We used cotton balls to add snow to our pictures too. This activity gave me a chance to reinforce and quiz kids on what they've been learning all week. Even though I had a sample project made, I left it up to the kids to figure out where all the parts belong in the picture.


I ran out of time to read both of these to all the students, but the books "The Mitten" and "The Hat" by Jan Brett were one of my favorite books growing up and it's easy to find ways to relate this book to topics of animals in winter and hibernation.

     

Animals in Winter: Part 2

The additional foot of snow we received on Wednesday meant no after school program, but the following day was jam packed with activities to continue our lessons on animals in winter and animal tracks.
One of the struggles with this after-school program has been finding a way to draw kids away from the computers, wii and board games and instead engage in hands-on science education. I set up a trail of different animals tracks from the front door all the way to the room I usually set up my activities in. This DEFINITELY worked as an attention-grabber, even for older kids and the interns that are rarely interested in my stuff were inquisitive and trying to "guess the animal".

Our plaster of paris animal prints were dry today and the kids had the chance to paint them... the idea is just to paint the track, in order to see it better... but most of the kids wanted to go all out on the paint.... (as you'll see below) I made sure I wrote with a sharpie their name, date, and animal print on the back. The plastic take-out containers we poured them in worked really well, the molds easily slid out. Styrofoam containers worked alright too.

Since only a handful of kids made the animal plasters the day before, I also had a matching game set up for other kids to test their animal track identification skills. One table had a series laminated animal tracks, the other table had cards with animals sketches an info about the animal. The goal: find the matches. This was a good ELS activity because the the animal cards had a lot of text on them. Reading the text sometimes helped provide hints on the appropriate match.

After snack, we went snowshoeing! First, we learned a little about the history of snowshoeing. After, we all went outside and tried it out for ourselves. While outside we also saw some animal tracks (likely squirrel) and some bird feathers scattered on the floor. Later the educators realized the feathers were from a bird that was snatched up by a hawk. We could see the hawk was feeding on the top of our building. (we only pointed this out to one or two of the older children... the blood and such made it a little too disturbing for Kindergarten/1st Graders) The kids had fun making their own tracks and getting an opportunity to "float" on the snow instead of sinking in nearly to their hips and thighs. After practicing walking, turning, and looking for animal tracks, we finished up with a race.... lots of wipe outs and snow flying everywhere, but everyone eventually made it to the other side of the courtyard!!

Animals in Winter: Part 1

We made animal tracks today with plaster of paris. (2 parts plaster to one part water) Using recyclable plastic food containers (take out containers) works well and gives kids each their own space to work in. It will probably take about 30-40 minutes for the plaster to dry. I recommend leaving the molds in there as it hardens, but it really depends on the type of molds you have and your experience with plaster of paris. When I did my trial runs, the shape of the prints were not holding well at all unless I left the mold in during the most of the drying time. The molds we had were rubber, they were very easy to pull out even once completely dry.

We discussed different animal tracks and what these animals tend to do to prepare for winter

1. Hibernate

2. Adapt- forage, grow a second coat

3. Migrate

We also read a book about bear hibernation called "Bear Snores On" by Karma Wilson

Tomorrow we will do step 2 of the animals prints- painting them like I did in the sample below, and some more activities to test our recognition of animals tracks.

Groundhog Day

To celebrate Groundhog Day (last Sunday, February 2nd). We learned a bit about groundhogs and did some easy arts and crafts. 

Discussion Points:

• The legend of Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil
• Did the groundhog see his shadow? what does that mean?
• Where does a groundhog live?
• What does he do all winter?
• Features of a groundhog's body 
• New vocab: mammal, hibernate, forage

The color by number can be found HERE

The other activity is a groundhog pop-up. You cover a cup with construction paper and slice the bottom of the cup so that your stick with the groundhog can move up and down. I recommend making the cup right side up (meaning the bottom of the cup is closer to the bottom). Kids will tend to glue the grass on upside down, however you won't get the full effect of the groundhog "hiding"if you do that. 

Directions can be found HERE
Template for just the groundhog cut outs: HERE

This also helped lead well into the theme for the rest of the week: Animals in Winter