Why does it Matter?

This school year, we have been thinking about why we need to take care of our environment. We started by looking at Open Space,

then took a trip to the local recycling center, 

and then thought about the animals that might live in the Open Space around us. We put up a bird feeder outside the classroom window and observed the birds (and squirrels!) that came to visit. 

This spring, we collected used up markers around the school and used the Crayola recycling program to recycle them. It turned into a big math problem when we counted what we had collected!

This week, we explored the question of why this all matters. Why should we care about our environment? We used Smithsonian Learning Lab to find some artwork that might help us start thinking about human impact on nature. We used this book wrapper created by Hokusai and two thinking routines. 

First, we used Looking 10x2. Students noticed the people, the mountain, the trees, the telescope, the writing, among other things. They wondered if the people were in a tent. They wondered if the green at the bottom of the picture was trash. They wondered if these people were looking for others littering. It was a fascinating discussion.

Then, we moved to The 3 Ys thinking routine to really dig into this topic. Why does taking care of the environment matter to me? To the people around me? To the world? 

We kept thinking about this question the next day in our Painted Reflection Journals.

 

Some of my favorite comments were:
"If you litter you and your BFF won't be able to play outside."
"You need the trees to breathe. To stay alive. Don't litter."
"Don't litter the ocean because it will hurt the animals in the ocean."
"So the world is a big ball of kindness."

It was a long journey of thinking and wondering and reflecting on this topic this year. Our hope is that we have planted a seed of stewardship in the students in our class and that will help them make good choices about how they use resources as they get older!