This exhibit explores a variety of topics including recycling, reducing, reusing and getting students to “re-think” the choices they make in their daily lives. Please check out the Clay Center and Classroom Challenges below and let us know if you have any ideas or suggestions for our curriculum. We would love to hear about some of the lessons or activities you have completed with your students!
Concepts: environmental science, recycling, critical and logical thinking, problem solving, life science
Try one or more of the following activities when visiting the Sustainable Choices exhibit during your tour. One of the most important things to do is to let students know exactly what sustainable means! This word gets thrown around a great deal, but in environmental terms, sustainability means that an action can be continued indefinitely with little or manageable impact on the environment. Because the health of the environment is closely linked with the health of society in general, sustainable practices make sure that the Earth's resources will be available for future generations to enjoy, and that there will be an Earth to enjoy them on in the future!
PreK – 1
Explore our interactive garden. Work with students as they plant flowers in our recycled mulch. Ask students if they can guess what the mulch is made of after feeling and smelling the substance. The mulch is actually made of recycled rubber and vinyl, like the tires on a car or truck!
Visit the Trash to Treasure Zone and explore the activities there. As students create and build, discuss the materials they are using. This is a great example of reusing. Ask them what they could do with these items at home.
When exploring the recyclables sorting activity, make sure students pay attention to what each material is and where it goes in the exhibit. Many students may not connect cardboard with being a paper product. Also, some of our plastic bottles may fool students at first glance into thinking they are made of glass. Encourage them to feel each material as they sort. How does it feel? How does it compare to the other materials? What could they re-use some of these materials for at home? Ask students if they recycle at home.
Be sure to make a leaf for our tree before you leave the gallery. The leaves will be added to our tree each week. You can ask for ideas from students on one thing they can do to make a difference. You can decide on a class leaf or make one for each suggestion. By the end of the exhibit, we hope to have a full tree with lots of environmental pledges!
Grades 2 – 5
Have students explore the recycling sorting activity. Ask them to say aloud the material each item is made of as they sort. After a little practice, you can even set a 30 second time limit and have students compete with sorting. The team with the most items in the bins on the opposite side when time is called is the “winner,” but we all win when we recycle, of course!
Have students compare the various light bulbs in the center of the gallery. What are the similarities? What are the differences? What type of bulbs do they use at home?
Print out our Junior Scavenger Hunt and bring copies with you to use as students visit the exhibit. This will provide some good discussion points as you explore the gallery together.
Be sure to make a leaf for our tree before you leave the gallery. The leaves will be added to our tree each week. You can ask for ideas from students on one thing they can do to make a difference. You can decide on a class leaf or make one for each suggestion. By the end of the exhibit, we hope to have a full tree with lots of environmental pledges!
Grades 6 – 12
Have students calculate and record their carbon footprint with the exhibit dedicated to this topic. For those students who aren’t driving yet, ask them to think about their parents and how they get from place to place. What are some simple ways to reduce someone’s carbon footprint? Why is this important?
At the exhibit panels that deal with shopping, ask students to define some of the terms given such as “organic” or “local.” This may sound simple, but very few adults can state what each term actually means. Ask students if they eat organic foods at home.
Print out our Senior Scavenger Hunt and bring copies with you to use as students visit the exhibit. This will provide some good discussion points as you explore the gallery together.
Be sure to make a leaf for our tree before you leave the gallery. The leaves will be added to our tree each week. You can ask for ideas from students on one thing they can do to make a difference. You can decide on a class leaf or make one for each suggestion. By the end of the exhibit, we hope to have a full tree with lots of environmental pledges!
PreK – 5
Ask students to bring in recyclable goods for a week, day or month. You can be general or specific in your request. Items may include newspaper, aluminum cans, plastic soda bottles, etc. Once you have amassed a large selection of goods, you can come up with several challenges to use these items. The links below have some very creative art activities you can do with recyclable materials. There are also challenges that can really test some creative thinking skills! (See next challenge)
Moon Base Missions! Challenge students to work in groups to create a moon base using only the recyclable materials you have collected as a class. You can make the challenges as simple or complex as you like. Some suggestions are to have one group focus on an all-terrain vehicle. What would they need to explore the surface of the moon? Another group could be in charge of creating a lunar greenhouse. Another could create a communications lab. Imagination is the only limit!
As you collect recyclable materials, pay close attention to the paper products. Use the link below from the paper council to share some amazing fact with your students about how much wood it takes to actually make paper and other wood products like toothpicks!
Start a recycling program at your school. If you already have one in place – good for you! Get your students involved. They can help sort items or make sure things get delivered to the proper locations for pick up. There are many opportunities for kids to get involved. To start a program, get in touch with your local sanitation or waste management department and learn more about how their existing programs function.
Grades 6 – 12 (Note: Many of these activities can be adapted to younger grades as well)
The next time students go to the grocery store, ask them to compare prices of organic products to similar non-organic items. What are the differences? After learning about what this term actually means, is the cost difference worth it? What are the benefits of eating organic goods? What are the drawbacks? The organic.org link below will also provide some interesting information on organic products and what it means to “be organic.”
Start a recycling program at your school. While teachers of younger students can also do this, as a teacher of older students, you get to share the workload with your class! If you already have one in place – good for you! Challenge your students to take an active role in the program. To start a program, ask students to research their local sanitation or waste management department to learn about ways to start the program. This could be an excellent opportunity for a guest speaker to visit your class as well!
Challenge students to learn more about “Green Careers,” which are careers in environmental science and care of our planet. Students may have heard of white collar jobs, and blue collar jobs, but there is a rapidly growing field of “green collar” jobs including everything from forest rangers to architects and engineers who use sustainable products. Some of the links below are a good place to get started.
Bring in technology! As students learn about these green collar jobs, have them make PowerPoint or other visual presentations on their field of study. Questions to answer might be: What type of education and training are required for this career? What are the benefits to our environment of this particular field? Where are educational facilities located that can train someone to work in this field? Why is this an important career?
PreK – 5
http://www.wipapercouncil.org/fun3.htm
http://www.makingfriends.com/recycle.htm
http://kinderart.com/recycle/
http://www.chevroncars.com/learn/wondrous-world/recycling-facts
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/recycling-facts-for-kids.html
http://www.terracycle.net/en-US/
Grades 6 – 12
http://www.organic.org/home/faq
http://www.greencareersguide.com/
http://pic.tv/topic/living-green/?gclid=CLfcxoKW3K0CFeYSNAodKATm5g
http://www.squidoo.com/recyclingfacts
http://www.terracycle.net/en-US/
Concepts: Health science, nutrition, physical activity, open inquiry, making inferences, critical and logical thinking
Grades PreK – 1
1. In the classroom, use images from magazines or newspaper to create your own My Plate collage. Use paper plates as a background for more fun. Remind students to have a well-balanced meal that includes protein, vegetables, fruit, grains and dairy.
2. Create a simple rainbow template and have students color the colors of the rainbow (you can even add a cloud as on the “Eat a Rainbow” exhibit). Have students name or draw a list of food items that would fit under each color.
3. Invite your school cook to the classroom to talk about how school lunches are planned. Ideally, it would be great to have students collaborate with the cook and plan a meal that can be prepared for the entire school (in accordance with county guidelines and food items on site, of course).
Grades 2 – 6
1. Have students keep a food journal for a day, week and/or month. For classroom sharing, have students share examples of a healthy meal they enjoyed with their family and, perhaps, a not-so-healthy meal or snack. For the unhealthy items, have student list substitute items that would have been a better choice.
2. Have students make two shopping lists. For the first list, have students put down everything they might want to buy at the supermarket. On the second list, ask students to be smart, healthy shoppers and come up with a list of healthy options. Review the two lists and see if there are compromises that can be made. For example, if a student really wants a candy bar, what “trade-off” can he or she make with a healthier option? For additional fun (and particularly useful for older students), you can make this a math activity and assign a budget to the students. On their next trip to the grocery store, have them keep a written list of prices and see if their lists fit within this budget. If not, what changes can they make to be within the budget?
3. Invite a nutritionist to visit your classroom. Ask the nutritionist to discuss not only the healthy foods we looked at in the exhibit and in student activities, but also to go into detail about what these foods do for our bodies and why we need them.
Grades 7 – 12
1. Ask students to bring in items from home and compare nutrition labels. Which foods have high fat content? Which have high sodium? High sugar? Have students figure out the number of fat grams versus the number of calories. For one gram of fat there are 9 calories. So, for example, if a serving of potato chips (about 20 chips) has 10 grams of fat, 90 calories are from fat. That's 10 grams x 9 calories per gram. If the total calorie count for 20 chips is 180, then half the calories are from fat – not a good snack option!
2. Supermarket scavenger hunt! Ask students to stop by their local supermarket and try to find a few things. What items can you find that have a high calorie count per serving? A low calorie count per serving? What items have high fat content? Low fat content? What items have a high fat in comparison to the overall calorie count (use the 9 calories per gram of fat ratio). Students can also compare brands of the same type of food or diet/light foods to regular versions. The final list is up to you, but this is a great way to get students to pay attention to what goes in their shopping carts.
3. Have students keep a lifestyle log for a week, keeping track of their food intake at each meal and snack (calories, fat grams, etc.) as well as their physical activity (duration, intensity, etc.). At the end of the week, ask students to analyze their data. Did their physical activity offset their food intake? What was their overall fat gram intake in relation to overall calorie count? What recommendations can they come up with to improve their overall health portrait for the week? You can even use the activity “calculator” at the last link below (healthstatus.com) to help figure out calories burned per activity (right down to brushing your teeth!).
Resource Links
PreK and Elementary School
http://kidshealth.org/kid/
http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/activities/analyze_my_plate.html
http://www.nutritionexplorations.org/kids.php
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/kids/
http://www.livestrong.com/article/362326-healthy-eating-activities-games-for-children/
http://helpguide.org/life/healthy_eating_children_teens.htm
Middle – High School
http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/activities/analyze_my_plate.html
http://www.dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/Health/Nutrition/
http://life.familyeducation.com/teen/nutrition/34519.html
http://helpguide.org/life/healthy_eating_children_teens.htm
http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=4&tax_level=3&tax_subject=358&topic_id=1612&level3_id=5951&level4_id=0&level5_id=0&placement_default=0
http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc
Click here for WV 21st Century Content and Standards and Objectives