Sustainability
This day is a challenging but fun day aimed at older primary school children and assumes that the class has a basic knowledge of key ecological concepts such as food chains and plant and animal life cycles. We play games outside to help understand the difference between natural objects and unnatural objects, and spend some time in the afternoon creating small shelters and 'villages' in the woods. The day also involves group discussion and we invite the children to form and express their own opinions and ideas and debate with each other to see if they can co-operatively reach a consensus. Although we do consider some of the negative impacts people can have on the earth we encourage positive responses to the challenges we face!
The day aims to support the National Framework for Sustainable Schools, and although you will find that many of the activities have good national curriculum links, this is not strictly the emphasis of the day. The day also gives the children an excellent opportunity to participate in learning outside the classroom.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the day children will:
- understand the difference between natural and unnatural materials and processes
- be able to explain about how cycles in nature create no waste
- have investigated the complex processes and the amount of raw materials and energy that go into making some everyday products
- have considered the impact that human beings can have on the natural world, and made decisions accordingly
Availability
All year round.Day Summary
The day begins with an introduction by the day leader, welcoming the children to the centre and explaining what will be happening in the day. We have a quick introduction to the concept of sustainability, and have a warm up game.The children then split into 3 groups for the day's activities: Natural Materials, Unnatural Materials and Pebble Island.
Natural Materials
Exploring the natural environment of Skelton Grange, we play a game with natural objects and then the children investigate where the objects come from and where they are going. We discuss how the cycle of natural materials is simple and complete with no waste.Unnatural Materials
We then play a game involving unnatural objects and spend some time investigating, again, where these objects come from and where they are going. We discover that the world of unnatural materials is very complicated and that a lot of energy and a lot of resources are needed to make objects like mobile phones and drinks cans.Pebble Island
In the afternoon the children get a chance to build a shelter in the woods for a pebble with eyes! We create a pebble island and discuss how we will meet our survival needs on the island. Using a map we mark out what kinds of things we will need on the island. We then have a discussion about what kind of things our pebbles may want. Using the information that we gained in the morning we work out what will happen to pebble island if we wanted to develop it to include, say, a theme park! We discover that the more unnatural things we want the less room we have for natural habitats and we may even start to undermine our survival needs!
Visit our Links page to find some fun ideas for pre-visit or follow-up activities!
