Earth Day Theme 3: Eating Insects

Best Theme Ever today!

TED Talk by Marcel Dicke called "Why Not Eat Insects?"

We have a cicada cookbook to hand out.  Published by the University of Maryland Cicadamaniacs.  online as a pdf:  Cicada-Licious:  Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicadas.

And we are going to ask students to work on an ad campaign convincing Westerners to consider insects as a food source.  We are the only part of the world which has such a strong aversion to this.  There was a great article in The New Yorker, August 15/22 2011, called Grub:  Eating Bugs to Save the Planet by Dana Goodyear.  read this article online

Earth Day Theme 2: Erosion

Yesterday's theme was Erosion and Watersheds. We live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, so this is a really big deal for us.

Resources:
 started with the Apple Lesson

Then two short films from the Smithsonian Institution: http://forces.si.edu/soils/
We watched Soil: The Secret Ingredient, and Get Soil Savvy! They have lots of other great resources as well.

Then we did two sheets from Strange Days, student handout #1 and #4.

 Followup activities were to do a watershed model (paint tray) or design an erosion plan for a bare hillside at our school (which is right above a storm drain).

Today, now that the clay scene in the watershed model is dry, we are going to sprinkle "Pollution Powder" (Kool-Aid) on our hillside and spray it with water, to watch the red rain run down into our "Bay."

Earth Day Theme 1: Water

Today's theme is Water.

We read My Great Grandmother's Gourdby Cristina Kessler.




The teacher next door talked about growing up in California and the times of water rationing and wildfires. We talked about how a person needs approximately 1 gallon per day but the average American uses 100 gallons! We shared water conservation tips, installed a rain barrel to water our butterfly garden, and passed out a handout -- a paper for students to list each time they use water during the day. Tomorrow we can graph the data.

We'd like to get 100 gallon jugs for next year. This would be a great visual!

Healthy Eating Activities

Healthy Eating Activities

I liked their suggestion of Bread and Jam for Frances as a tie-in to this topic!

There are supposed to be free food cards that you can request from the American Dairy Council but I can't find them anywhere! If I can, I will post the correct link.