Key questions
What activities impact on the environment?
How can we reduce our impact on the environment - but still have fun?
Outline
In these activities children consider their actions and the impact of their actions on the environment.
Preparation
Many of these activities need a bit of space and involve the children working in groups. These activities could be completed at the start of other activities on climate change.
Learning outcomes
On completing these activities all children will be able to:
- recognise the impact of their actions on the environment; and
- know that some activities have less negative impacts on the environment.
Resources
- Select from resource cards 1-26 or use miscellaneous images from magazines and newspapers
- Small pieces of scrap paper, approximately 3cmX3cm or ‘Post-It’ notes
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Learning activities
1. Spread photographs on floor of classroom and ask children to circulate, looking at all the photographs.
2. Ask the children (alone or in pairs) to select a photograph they like.
3. Ask the children in pairs to talk about the photograph at their tables.
4. Ask the children to draw themselves on a small piece of paper or yellow ‘stickie’. Put the picture of themselves in the picture. Ask them to use their senses:
- What can you hear?
- What can you see?
- What can you smell?
- How do you feel?
6. Get the children to talk about the activity they are doing in the picture.
7. With the whole class standing, rank the pictures as to which have the lowest and highest impact on the environment. This is virtually an impossible task, however it allows children to think about differing impacts on the environment.
- Low impact activities: playing, cycling, walking, recycling.
- High impact activities: flying, driving.
8. Using Investigation 14a, get the children to discuss the day-to-day things they do.
9. Ask children to cut out and rank the activities on the ‘Possible Things To Do’ (Investigation 14b) in side-by-side columns:
- Which activities have the most positive impact on reducing their contribution to Climate Change?
- Which are the easiest to do?
10. Make a Mind Map! See Investigation 14c.