We’ve been spinning through the week celebrating our Earth, Earth, and more Earth. We’ve recovered nicely from our 2 mile walking field trip to the local supermarket, and moved onto more eco teacher friendly activities.
We had an on-site field trip about 20 feet from our classroom today ~ We ran there! 🙂 When we arrived {out of breath ~ us, not them} we were in awe to find the Wyland Clean Water Mobile Learning Experience. It was 45 minutes of pure hands-on Eco-ness, as we learned about the importance of keeping our waterways clean in this mobile classroom. We loved it!
As we were leaving, one of our friends asked, “If that thing is all about keeping the Earth clean, why did they drive up in a BIG truck that pollutes the air?” Hmmm…Future Eco Activist or Mother Earth’s heir to the throne? Trying ever so hard to keep a completely straight face, we told him that was an excellent question and one he should ask his parents to help him look up at home. No seriously, of course we had to go find the real answer…turns out it runs on Bio Diesel. Phew! The Earth can keep spinning…
When we returned, we worked our way through some of our We Love the Earth activities.
Digraphs seem to be a challenge this year, so to help our friends we threw out this Sort the Trash digraph activity for practice. Next week, this smelly trash will stick around in our Workshop for independent practice.
To practice some key eco friendly vocabulary, we played “We Love the Earth Bingo”. We have to admit, we were a little concerned how well our first grade friends would catch on to some of these terms. Trying to explain global warming and e-waste to seven year olds would typically be setting our lesson up for a good ‘ol fashion snooze fest, but they surprised us!
We discovered,
If you teach it, they will learn.
Plus, putting it into ‘game’ form usually helps. Ha! By the time we were done playing, the kids knew these words so well they were telling us all about their piles of e-waste at home and how much pollution they have contributed to poor Mother Earth. It was like an Eco Confessional! We listened patiently, forgave them of their wasteful ways, and sent them off to recess so we could decompose rest.
In an effort to Reduce the amount of energy we had already poured into our day, we decided to Reuse this gem of a video we found a few years back…
We really don’t show videos in class very often, unless they tie nicely into the curriculum, but this one has fast become an Earth Week tradition in our class. It was a great way to Recycle another busy day in first grade.
Good Night Friends…
