Education for sustainability

Environmental Education RESOURCES, GAMES, and ACTIVITIES for:

Parents, school teachers, community groups, holiday programme leaders
in the EfS - Education for Sustainability process.

 GOALS - to build in -:

eco-creativity, a sense of FUN, and accessibility in to what we teach,
a sense of competitive spirit and, Peer to Peer Education
research in to fun environmental facts

sustainability themes more broadly across home play and the entire Curricula.

Here is a link to one of our (3) PowerPoint Presentations on Slide Share - about the role of play in environmental education
https://www.slideshare.net/NKuna13/the-role-of-play-in-environmental-education

Inspiring change through competition and fun

By bringing eco-learning onto a more sub-conscious level, we are more likely to stir up the desired (subliminal, emotional) response in young people. Less thinking and more doing!

The creative tasks involve team-work, and work well in composite classes, where older kids can encourage or teach the younger ones (peer to peer education) See Kids Teaching Kids website.

Games, Crafts and Activities

Goal: Engender Inventive Spirit and Eco-creativity

Inventive Environmentally inspired Games and Game Design Activities

Find an environmental theme and build a card game around it. One might be a game akin to Snap. The theme might be how toys and activities for children have changed over time. Find some old cardboard packages and them up in to card shape pieces, and draw pictures depicting toys and games on one side of the cards. Do two of each card. Stick on pictures of a wooden truck, a Nintendo DS, a piece of elastic (with youngsters doing scissory gymnastics), a hot rod car & a Television.

The aim of the game is to match up the pictures. Players can discuss how biodegradable the toys are, and what they do with their machines/ toys when they are finished with them. For the more advanced, they can look in to a life cycle analysis of young people's devices and toys.

Join the Dots Sketch ups
For the littlies – teachers or older students can help them design and sketch Join the Dots Illustrations of environmentally inspired themes for example a Scarecrow designed in to the landscape around a field of fruit trees, veggies and flowers to keep the crows away, or a country backdrop with a few wind turbines along the roadside or other environmentally inspired theme, that gets revealed as the dots are joined. Great way to learn to count and instil a sense of eco-creativity.

Paint by Numbers
The same idea applies as the Join the Dots Sketch idea, but the colouring is done by painting, with paint numbers and corresponding colours. This is a more advanced art project for students to design a paint by numbers piece.

Make an A3 size environmentally inspired picture (such as the one of a fun bin) and glue the page with the picture on to a piece of cardboard of similar size. Then, cut the picture in to different jig saw puzzle pieces, place them down on a table face up and the aim of the game is to reconnect the pieces to recreate the original picture. Alternatively think up eco themed pictures including a bicycle, a bus, or drinking fountain, make two or four of the same picture so that the cards can be turned over and played as a memory game. Memory and visual games can help drive behaviour change (and a change of heart) by stirring up a subconscious response in the participant which helps build prompts to action.

There are commercial environmental board games available including the Keep Cool, Wild Seed Game, Gaia's Garden, Oceanopoly, Earthopoly, My First Three Nature Games (Bioviva), to name a few. Here is a Eco Action Games site - which sells various games.

Create a simple Board Game with dice, with a sustainability aim, such as a recycling goal. One example is to draw in bins in corners nearer the bottom, (roll the dice using appropriate rubbish tokens, and hop a long) opening out in to pictures of different types of rubbish and food scraps, at the opposite end. The AIM of the game is to get the relevant rubbish to the correct bin.

Or a MAZE that helps the native or indigenous wildlife negotiate their way past the harmful exotic predators to the protected sanctuary. Young children can create their own treasure maps with environmental messages and outcomes, and add in riddles, clues and other tempters to get the children engrossed in the activity.

Or a game based on Snakes and Ladders lay-out with an enviro theme.

Junior Years In Flu Season or Times of Coronavirus - PLAY GAMES with a face covering or full mask.
Following the principle of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, one child gets blind-folded at a time. A board gets constructed with holes cut out and the object of the game is to fit the recyclable rubbish - PET bottles, milk cartons, tin cans through the appropriate holes in the board. Probably a game for the littlies, who love playing games with a face covering 'in the dark'. By engaging in a fun activity, this helps youngsters to have the act of recycling imprinted on their sub-conscious minds and to know that recycling in itself certainly doesn't have to be hum drum.

Crafty Design Activities

Younger years can go crazy making Wizard gowns and other crazy outfits out of clothing off-cuts or other non-hazardous waste materials.
Rob Greenfield who at one point was cavorting about with a months worth of waste strapped to his body - can be used as a Campaigner extraordinaire for inspiration.

Design and construct a Practical Object/Work of Art/Sculpture made of recycled materials (which Art teachers and after school educators in to Art programmes as a matter of course!) The art piece could be purely aesthetic or more functional, such as a piece of jewellery, a headband, or a skipping rope. It could be something as basic, as making wrapping paper out of recycled paper materials, greeting cards, Christmas decorations, a Sun Visor, or a tree out of toilet rolls. Readers will get a lot of inspiration on how to use recycled objects from the Internet and You Tube.

Easier projects for younger pupils include designing and making BOOKMARKS, basic CALENDARS, Birthday and other GREETING CARDS, party DECORATIONS and HATS, and KITES, all constructed out of RECYCLED cardboard, plastics, and other art materials and colouring pencils with fun environmental themes.   A Birthday Card showing the way leaves fall off the trees and on to the ground get recycled by remaining as a mulch layer for hummus and water retention. Activity books such as the Lorax Energy Star book below, building all of these environmentally themed ideas and activities in, can be the final product.

Middle School Years - a Peer Education project for Art - make up Colouring Books with pictures of endangered species, recycling, or other environmental themes. One example is entitled Nature's Recyclers from an online site: EEK - Environmental Education for Kids. Older students can have fun designing Eco-Minded Activity Books for the littlies along the lines of the Invader Rangers (a Canadian interactive site) and in these Activity Books they could include pictures of local invasive species or even threatened species for Colouring in or Word Searches with eco themes, and eco-themed Crosswords as would suit Year 1 to 4's etc. This gives the older pupil the opportunity to learn about the material, whilst also learning how to make the material more appealing and age appropriate for the younger grades.

For the Senior years - Cartoons can be drawn - either by hand or for the more digitally minded, by computer with environmentally inspired themes. The cartoons can be basic or more complex in the form of comic strips, with stories with a subtle message. For those who need some inspiration - here are some great names to look up, but don't be put off as these cartoonists have been doing it for years! : Sepponet, Mike Swofford, and our favourite, Rohan Chakravarty.

OUT IN NATURE

Goal: Green gaming and activities- engender a healthy competitive spirit

Just as with board and indoor games, outdoor games can be adapted for playing which build in some form of environmental sensitivity or message.

Kids' outdoor game - children are partnered up and one is blindfolded while the other one acts as (safety) guide - each pair wanders around the garden. The blindfolded child is asked by the guide to identify through their non-visual senses (a) individual plant types (shrubs versus herbaceous perennials) (b) pollination plants (c) habitat plants and structures – such as hollowed out places for skinks, lizards (d) and locate shadey spots vs sunny spots and all manner of elements in nature with symbiotic relationships.

Here is a game for younger children from Green Teacher Magazine Issue 93 - and scroll through to page 13 to 'Amphibians and Two Game Structures' (in this online free sample of the magazine). The game involves considerable exercise, frog habitat information and a lot of competitive spirit! Discussion about specific frog species should be adapted to the particular location of the classroom.

See also this link to a clever game entitled When Nature Speaks sourced from Green Teacher.com.

Green Teacher Mag is a great resource for anything about Nature Deficit Disorder, and getting kids out in to nature with lots of outdoorsy activities.

The littlies can collect used PET bottles and cut them up and turn them in to MINI GREEN HOUSES in pots, as seen in photo courtesy of Dirt Girl World (great stuff DGW - Australia).

Also check out the Endangered Species Game we suggest below under Holiday Programme Activities.

Quizz Makers - Taught across Geography, History, Lifestyle classes

Goal: Encourage Research in to Fun Facts

Students of all ages create content for QUIZZES about anything cheeky and fun in nature, such as mating facts of animals/reptiles, methane gases emitted, queer sewerage facts, or recycled toilet paper consumed (asking such questions as which countries use more toilet paper – you'd be surprised which nation's bottoms 'need' the most!) Kids love anything to do with smelly and disgusting stuff. Here is an interesting link to the amazing facts about Whale Poo!

Quizzes can be made up about all manner of FUN FACTS such as ECO GLAMOUR: recycled fashion wares for young women - eg finding out which 'upcycled' outfits - 1950s, 60s or 70s vintage have the most websites, or which companies accept the return of fashion for recycling textiles. The students might like to research their favourite eco products eg. Lily Bloom - bags made from recycled plastic bottles, or biodegradable materials, and the many pretty designs Envirosax carry bags come in. Find out which countries our unwanted goods are turning up in, or now being turned away!

Links to Games, Quizzes and online Educational Activities

Links below - according to - CLIMATE CHANGE/ENERGY, GENERAL IMPACT,  HABITATS AND NATURE

CLIMATE CHANGE/ENERGY

Cool Australia - Resources suiting the Australian Education Curriculum

Earthwatch Institute - Climate Change Lesson Plans (Australia)

Climate Change Word Search

Carbon Related School Projects for Middle Years

EIA Energy Kids - Riddles

Lorax Energy Star - Comic Activity Book

From A to B - All about Buses (NZ)

Teacher Resources - EPA (USA)

MOCKED UP FISH CROSSWORD

HABITATS/ NATURE

Cool Australia - Resources suiting the Australian Education Curriculum

Nature Recyclers Colouring Book

http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/kids/activities - Kids' Corner

Kids Teaching Kids

Australian Maritime Safety Authority Kids Page

Green Teacher Magazine - fantastic resource

Habitat Game (Environmental Education You tube)

Earth Ecology Conservation

Species In Pieces

Join the Pod

Love the Outdoors Scavenger Hunts

Cloud Institute Fish Game

Earthwatch Activities

Environment Protection Authority (USA) Teacher Resources

GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT/END USE - WASTE

Enviro Kids (NZ) - range of topics

Cool Australia - Resources suiting the Australian Education Curriculum

Games encouraging household recycling

Upcycling for Kids

NEA - Eco Boys and Girls

Join the Pod - Activities, Games, Info Packs

Pinterest - Examples of Crafts and Activities Using Recycled Materials (Repurpose/Refashion/Upcycling)

Fifty Ways to Upcycle Plastic Bags

Recycle City

Eddie the Puppet's Road Tours

Online Games

EDF Online Games

Bio Energy Farm Game - Secondary to University

Clim'Way - Strategy Game to Reduce Emissions

Smog City - get the city's smog under control

Eco Action Trumps - App - via I Tunes

Chain Reaction - Eco Kids (form a food chain)

Videos With Environmental Themes

The Story of Stuff and other (series)– Annie Leonard

Life Psycle-ology

It's the Little Things

Plastic State of Mind (Music Video)

EekoWorld   - Turn off the Light

Banana Slug String Band - The Water Cycle Boogie

Dirt Girl World TV series and website

Captain Planet and the Planeteers

Environmentally minded computer games:

19 Climate Change Games that Could Change the Future

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/gaming-for-good-sustainability-video-games

Vegan Vampire Game

Botanicula - the friends solve eco puzzles and seek to save a tree from parasites

Lume game

(These last 3 games were discovered at a Games Festival at ACMI Melbourne, so the reader can make their own inquiries about their current eco credentials, and some may no longer work on current software programmes!)

AFTER SCHOOL/ HOLIDAY ECO GAMES AND ACTIVITY IDEAS

Enticing younger kids to love and respect nature.

Endangered Species Balloon Game

Research and select ONE climate change affected species that can be sketched easily. Half the group inflates balloons and then sketches that endangered species on to each inflated balloon. Other half of the group researches what are the key reasons behind the 'selected species' being listed as endangered. They bring in to class old T Shirts and paint the source of the threats on to T Shirts to be worn by them. So, for example, if the balloon has an ORANGUTAN drawn, then the research group draw pictures of burning forests or Palm Trees on to the T Shirts. Object of the game is for those not wearing the T Shirts to keep the Balloons in play without letting the ones wearing the T Shirts get the balloons.

CREATIVE USE OF VISUALS

Students run workshops about the amazing features of dirt. Get the youngsters to dress up, as one of their favourite bugs! At camp or on holiday programme, they can sew or construct their own costumes. One activity involves interviewing each other about the role of bugs in our eco-systems. They can make up stories about where the dung beetle, the worms and all the other critters go when we over-develop gardens - replace grass and vegetation with pools and concrete. Explain the reasons why the top-soil is so important to the biosphere, bio-diversity aspects and for a sustainable landscape design. Research which countries have top-soil levels at MOST RISK and the impacts caused by agricultural industries. Research solar and renewable innovations, Hydroponics, Vertical and Indoor Farming and other ways to prevent and/or overcome depletion of top-soil.

One way to get youngies interested in the health of our oceans and waterways is to arrange a PARTY or EXCURSION to the beach and have a ‘Mermaid’ turn up to tell a story about ocean habitats. Why not attempt to make JEWELLERY out of plastic waste.

Drive With Heart - Dress Up A Bollard to Slow the Traffic Around a Park

Children and Nature Network website is a fantastic resource for all manner of activities, including ones for the littlies.

BRING A BRANCH DAY - Pupils approach their parents about helping out with some pruning at home and bring in a branch from a tree in their gardens. The exercise for the class is to measure the density of the foliage and to work out which plants are ideal for planting to create a shady spot in the garden (UV protection, to shade the house, and to create a place to shelter from the sun, in the heat of the day.) It will be a good geography and physics lesson in understanding the angles of the sun, how shadows are formed, etc.

Some suggestions sourced from -:

Parks Victoria – Junior Rangers programme :

http://www.sustainablemelbourne.com/movements/parks-victorias-junior-rangers-holiday-program/

Led by a park ranger, children and their families can take part in a range of activities mentioned on the link, above.

At Converse Conserve, we believe in education being 'informational' and 'inspirational'. Just remember all the causal drivers that bear on human behaviour: intellectual, functional, moral, sensual, emotional, psychic, sub-conscious drivers. The language of environmental education and campaigning can take all of these in to account.

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