Earth Week

This past week, I went to my placement at Rose only to be reminded that I was visiting class on Earth day. All week, the class had been participating in activities that included building fort out of recycled boxes and talking about the different environments that exist all around the world. When I arrived, the class began an activity involving the earth, a large painted circle with a frowny face and thermometer in its mouth, being sick and having a high temperature. The students all took turns putting bandaids on the earth with potential, “solutions” to getting the earth better written on them. The activity was framed as in a way so that the students kept their solutions very practical and remained on a more individual level. Once we had run out of band aids, we replaced the frown and thermometer that was in the earth’s mouth with a smiling face and hung it up on the wall. The activity was followed up with kid choice time, during which I was designated to lead the charge in constructing a race car out of recycled cardboard to go along with the fort that was already made. The hands on activities with cardboard, in my opinion, fit in very well in the kindergarten environment. However, I believe that the band-aid activity, although productive in its ability to get the students thinking about solutions, is not a wholly productive exercise in that it appears to be designed with a fear of leaving the issues facing our planet unresolved. The activity consequently ends in a way that may lead the students to believe that the issue is much less serious and ongoing than it is in reality.