Green Science Made Fun
Get kids thinking about the planet with these cheap and simple at-home activities
Chances are, a lot of us didn’t get exposed to environmental issues at a young age. Don’t let the same thing happen to your kids. Get them thinking green early in life with some environmental education right in your own home!
Sue McKee is the national coordinator of the partnership program for Let’s Talk Science, an organization working to get students excited about science. As part of the program, university students volunteer to go into classrooms to do hands-on activities with children. McKee has amassed a great collection of games and activities for kids, many with an environmental message These simple activities can be done with common household materials. Neighbours and friends can join in the fun, too! Before the activity, you might want to get the wheels turning by reading them a book with a green theme. Best of all, these games are the perfect lead up to back to school time.
Water Conservation Activity
What you need: A plastic tub
Instructions: Put a plastic tub in a sink for a whole day to collect all the water that is used. Observe how much water it collects. It may take an hour or an entire day to fill up.
What kids learn: Following the experiment, discuss methods of water conservation with your child, such as turning off the tap while brushing their teeth.
Activity courtesy Sue McKee, Let’s Talk Science.
Garbage Reduction Activity
What you need: bathroom scale, garbage waste, pen/pencil, notebook
Instructions: Have your son weigh himself on the scale, then write that number down. Next, have him weigh himself holding a bag of garbage. Subtract his weight from the total number to determine the weight of the garbage. Repeat this exercise over a two-week period, and at the end tally up the weight of all the garbage thrown out.
What kids learn: This activity will get kids thinking about how much garbage the family creates from week to week—and ways the entire household can cut down.
Activity courtesy EcoKids.
The Hoppit Game
What you need: A material for “food,” such as pine cones if you are playing outdoors, or any other small object if playing indoors
Instructions: Invite some friends over to play this game! Have the children pretend to be imaginary animals called Hoppits that hop around on both feet. Designate an area as the home base, and have them collect the “food” and bring it back to the home base and add it to the pile. Then tell them humans have built a road on their home base, and they can only hop around on one foot while collecting food and two feet while on home base. Next, announce that humans have built a mall on their home base, and they no longer have anywhere to store their food and put both feet down. Now they must eat their food as they go and hop around on one foot.
What kids learn: The children will notice how increasingly difficult their lives become when their environments are tampered with. Start a discussion about what an animal would do if they suddenly had nowhere to store their food.
Activity courtesy Sue McKee, Let’s Talk Science.
Water Strider Activity
What you need: medium-sized bowl of water, scissors, a scrap piece of speaker wire, dish detergent
Instructions: To fashion an insect known as a water strider, cut off a piece of speaker wire about four inches in length. Pull out two fine strands of copper, then cross them over each other to form an X and twist in the center, so there are now four “legs.” Fill the bowl half full with water and gently drop the strider into the center. The strider should float on the top (if it doesn’t, try spreading out the legs more or switch to a lighter type of wire). Now add a drop of detergent to the water, and watch as the water strider sinks to the bottom.
What kids learn: Water striders rely on the surface tension of the water to stay afloat and reach their food (insects that fly near the water’s surface). Kids will see how chemicals in the water affect the water strider’s ability to float and thus obtain food.
Activity courtesy Mad Science.
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