By Amy Jussel •
September 24, 2008
Teachers and parents donning polar bear heads is inherently fun and effective in getting the attention of the K-8 crowd. If you can snag just ONE assembly hour to kick off this grassroots green program for climate change, KIDS can take it from there, bringing home Cool the Earth influences for micro-change into every household.
Social change agents have learned the hard way that adapting kid-friendly programs into ‘core curriculum’ is a time sink, whereas schools embrace participation as ‘enrichment,’ since it’s no hassle for teachers, ‘apolitical,’ and take place in an informal, volunteer environment with programs that are ready to run.
By Amy Jussel •
September 16, 2008
BBC Scotland is leveraging kids’ pension for codes, clues, missions and 007-style in a fun little interactive for young kids 7-9 called The Environmental Intelligence Unit.
In classic “the world needs your help” secret agent mode, the game puts the child in ‘action-hero’ context to take on traffic, pollution and rubbish aligned with the three R’s of reduce, reuse, recycle.
It’s a pretty basic primer to seed core concepts in sustainability, but definitely age appropriate, incorporating factoids and video clips as kids become environmental agents on a mission to ‘find the missing R.’ (spoiler alert: the teacher’s page will fill you in on what that “R” is!)
There are four island missions (house, clear out, school, beach) and if kids engage in all four to obtain the right code words they can receive a final Eco Certificate. (hmnn…I know this is geared more for ‘reach and teach’ tactics, but I could think of some more creative/green awards that might be a better fit than a printout! So ping me, BBC, the idea hamster here will give you some freebie creative director ideas!)
By mcmilker •
September 10, 2008
As The US House of Representatives votes on No Child Left Inside this week, this is your last chance to let your legislator know you want MORE funding for training teachers in outdoor education, MORE funding to expand environmental education programs and MORE programs to ensure that US graduates are environmentally
[...]
Teachers and parents donning polar bear heads is inherently fun and effective in getting the attention of the K-8 crowd. If you can snag just ONE assembly hour to kick off this grassroots green program for climate change, KIDS can take it from there, bringing home Cool the Earth influences for micro-change into every household.
