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Molly taught an in depth lesson about climate change this past week at McKay. The first step was to get the kids thinking about the topic in a creative way. Molly brought a tool to do just that. One of the hinge components of her lesson is the relationship of heat and light. We can see light but we can’t really see heat. With the help of her thermal camera, she showed the kids that heat isn’t just some abstract thing that makes you want to swim in the summer! With the visual aid, they were better able to grasp the relationship between light entering the atmosphere and heat being trapped by it.

The kids have a good knowledge base (as evidenced by Jeopardy! the week before) because we incorporate climate change in a lot of our lessons but Friday was an entire class period dedicated to it. I love Molly’s teaching style because she allows for a lot of group and partner discussion after a main section, allowing the kids to see if their inklings are headed in the right direction. She discussed the nuanced dynamic of carbon dioxide and the atmosphere. The kids had a hard time at first because they had to realize that CO2 isn’t inherently detrimental. In fact, they learned we need it, and that it’s the over saturation of CO2 that causes problems. We want the right balance between being too cold with too little atmospheric blanket and too much blanket and creating a hot, Venus-like planet.

After the explanation of the greenhouse effect, the kids drew models demonstrating some sort of climate change from something they were familiar with. Most chose car and factory emissions as a leading cause, while others got creative with their favorite characters cutting down trees and reducing the number of natural carbon sinks available to sequester the carbon already in circulation.

The kids found this topic kind of scary, and it is. But in one of the group discussions an interesting question came up: What can we do as kids to stop the Earth from getting too hot for humans? I let the other children in the group brainstorm ideas and one quickly answered with, “We can start a protest saying plant more trees.” Not all hope is lost.

McKay and MLCS had the chance to put their knowledge to the test in a game of Jeopardy!. All the organization heads got together to come up with questions covering what we’ve learned since the beginning of the year. Categories included: harbor science, the harbor islands, composting, planting, and climate change. Each child or group of children had 30 seconds to come up with the correct response on their dry-erase boards and if no correct response was given the other teams got a chance to steal. This part of the game had everybody hanging on to every question!

At McKay, both Alex’s got to act as their namesake, Alex Trebek, which the kids could not get enough of. I could not say I was surprised by how much the children had retained. They knew all the harbor islands, what worms we used in compost, could explain the greenhouse effect, and knew what they could do in their everyday life to lessen climate change. No points were deducted for not answering in the form of a question. Every team with points on the board received a dum-dum.

The Climate Nature team, along with the children over at the Donald McKay School, learned about the negative effects of climate change. To bring local context, we detailed its effects on something our neighborhood holds very dear, The Belle Isle Marsh. After learning about all the animals that depend on and live in the marsh, as well as the part the marsh plays as a storm buffer, the kids were excited to write their representatives and mayor to exercise their efficacy in local government. Here’s what some of them had to say!

Nature at both Maverick Landing and Donald McKay this past week focused on sea-life. The kids love to talk about sea turtles and share what knowledge they have from our previous lessons. Instead of lecturing about how harmful plastics can be to the turtles, we asked the kids to remember what we’ve talked about and to include those thoughts on notecards they would then attach to turtles they made out of sugarcane plates. There was talk of plastic straws, light pollution, and plastic bags left on the beach. All these thoughts were pinned to the turtles as “wishes” to help protect the turtles now and in the future. Some may sound like commands but they assured me they were wishes.

We made turtles with the second graders over at McKay later in the week. They also surprised me with how much information they can remember about one animal.

The fourth and fifth graders got a little different experience. Heather has been collecting all kinds of shells from her trips to the beach over the past summer. The fifth graders got a chance to pore through the collection and pick their share of shells to fashion a mobile.

The fourth graders had a ball painting surf clam shells. Lots of learning going on but also it was beautiful to see the kids engaged with each other, offering to share paints, shells, and in the case of the fifth graders, offering to help each other tie knots when it was too awkward to do themselves.

The kids were sad to learn that this was the last Nature before the break. We’ll be back to learn more in the new year. Can’t wait to hear how all the gifts were received.

The New England Aquarium visited Donald McKay a few Fridays ago to teach the children about different marine habitats around Boston. To illustrate the variations in both habitat, and subsequently, the marine life within each, they brought touch tanks!

Learning that these animals existed around Boston, whether at the Belle Isle Marsh or Constitution Beach, was very exciting! It also drove home how important it is to keep habitats like the Belle Isle Marsh in tact so that these animals won’t become displaced as the habitats shift. The aquarium also set up an overfishing activity using straws and various snacks, wherein the children were paired and would use the straw to “fish” snacks from the water (a plate) to their boat (a bowl) for a season (15 seconds). Afterwards the manager, the child who didn’t fish that season, would take stock of the water and for every two of each snack left, they’d receive one more of that snack. It was the manager’s job to ensure that overfishing was carefully watched so as to not run out of any one snack after each season.

The next Wednesday, the children at Maverick Landing Community Services learned about sailing and charts thanks to the lesson organized by Alex DeFronzo of the Piers Park Sailing Center. After locating East Boston on the chart and the importance of Boston’s location as a maritime hub, as its protected from high waves by the clusters of islands and peninsulas that provide calmer waters nearer to shore, the children made their own globes for their chance to win a hat from the Sailing Center.

‘Recycle, reuse, reduce’ was the theme today with the Climate NaTURE program at the McKay Elementary. As a way to foster the zero waste concept, we encourage the kids collect recyclable materials at home themselves and bring them to class. We saw their creativity shine as each made their unique recycled art project with what they had collected. From robots, to butterflies, to piggy banks and desk organizers, they used their imagination to make some really cool things. The 5th graders got very creative with an indigenous Mexican-themed craft using sticks collected from the Belle Isle Marsh and recycled t-shirts donated by community residents which were cut into yarn and woven onto the two sticks to create a diamond-shaped design. They decorated them with other recycled or natural materials for a finishing touch. It was a very fun project for the kids and teachers alike!’