This Earth Day, build cross-curricular connections and use real-world examples to drive lessons home with learners of all ages.
In Water, Water Everywhere: Designing Water Filters Grade 1-5 students explore and discuss the connections between water and the water cycle and the role of engineers in providing and maintaining clean and safe drinking water. The unit begins with the storybook Saving Salila's Turtle, in which a girl named Salila living in India explores ideas from the field of Environmental Engineering in order to save a turtle from its polluted environment. Over the course of the unit, students investigate sources of pollution in their own communities and evaluate how well different materials filter contaminants from water. Like Salila, students then follow the steps of the Engineering Design Process to imagine, plan, create, and improve their own water filters.
The Best of Bugs: Designing Hand Pollinators Virtual Learning Edition allows Grade 1-5 students to learn about pollination and the field of agricultural engineering. They then design hand pollinators to pick up pollen from model flowers and drop it off elsewhere. Individual On-the-Go Materials Kits make learning hands-on and fun for students, even when learning in a virtual learning environment. The On-the-Go Kit includes everything one student needs to complete the challenge and practice thinking like an engineer.
Go Green: Engineering Recycled Racers - In this unit, students in grades 3 - 5 will use recycled materials that would ordinarily be discarded to engineer their own toy cars, then compete in a Recycled Racer Rally.
Catching the Wind: Designing Windmills - The storybook Leif Catches the Wind introduces students grades 1 - 5 to wind turbines that generate renewable energy. Students will study how common machines such as mechanical pencils and egg beaters work, then use their mechanical engineering skills to solve a real world challenge as they design sailboats and windmills that catch the wind.
A Stick in the Mud: Evaluating a Landscape - Suman Crosses the Karnali River takes students grades 1 - 5 to Nepal, where people rely on innovative cable bridges called TarPuls to cross flooded rivers during monsoon season. Digging into the role of geo-technical engineers, students must select a safe, flood-proof, and erosion-proof location for a new TarPul.
How are you celebrating Earth Day this year? Let us know in the comments!
