A Day In The Town

Bright Lights and the Big City

"You can feel the electricity, on in the evening air.."-CLG

It amazes me how far technology and science has come in the world we live in today.  Everything we have and are known to love somehow relates back to our advances in science and technology.  But are they really advances?  Do we actually care about the environment and making the world a better place?  Or are we just exercising our entitlement to convenience?

Ignorance is Bliss, or is it?

In America, citizens are born into convenience at their every whim.  We are so consumed with consumer merchandise that it is very easy to forget the resources we are provided with in the world around us.  The process of learning has depended upon memorization, teacher-fed answers, and slight exploration.  The Common Core Standards are going to work on turning education back into true learning.  While reading Koch the statement "open-ended questions-those that lead to multiple answers-are especially important because they help students think critically about the investigation," (293) really struck me.  At first I didn't like the idea, but then I realized why I had such a personal bias against open ended questions.  The education I have received has taught me content in black and white, it was not until upper level high school and college did I encounter what grey area thinking was in relation to school.  If there is no definitive answer, then that means the student must critically think to explain why they feel the way they do about a certain answer.  These open ended questions provide a way to encourage students to dig deeper in their experiences but also their conversational skills.  This type of thinking teaches students to use the resources they have wisely.

Paper, Plastic, Trees? 

Today we received these awesome books (Thanks Kim!)!  The first thing I noticed was that they entire resource was made from recycled paper and I thought that it was neat!  Project Learning Tree is a educational resource that helps "increase peoples' awareness and knowledge about the environment and related issues."  This group also wants to help children (and adults) "develop skills and expertise to address environmental issues, understand the complexity of our environment, and call an awareness to action."  

  

We did an activity today to help us learn more about the environment.

Did you know that all of this:

Pencils, gum, plastic wrap, cloth, corks, leaves, paper, crayons, and sponges...

All come from this:

Trees.  All of it.  Some of the objects obviously came from trees, but others I had NO idea. 

I found this activity extremely interesting and I would love to recreate it in my classroom.  There were lots of things that I didn't expect to be made from trees and then later found out they were; it got me thinking about what other things are made from the environment that I didn't know about.

Baby Got Back

We also did an experiment today dealing with diapers: How much liquid will they hold? What are they made of?  Are cloth or disposable diapers better? 

Our prediction was that the diaper could hold 2.5 cups of water

 

We discovered the diaper (Stater Bros. Brand) could hold 2.5 cups COMFORTABLY and 3 cups sopping wet.  I never really thought about what is in a diaper to hold the liquid a baby produces.

When we opened up the diaper, we noticed that there was a crystalized gelly substance.  When the diaper was dry we found that those crystals were small, white, and fluffy.  After doing research we found that those crystals are actually super absorbent polymers by the name of sodium polyacrylate.

Back to Your Friendly Neighborhood CVS

"Thank you for calling CVS Mission Viejo, where we offer flu shots 7 days a week, this is Bailey, how can I help you today?"

Convenience at its best.

We have thousands of stores like this one all over the United States. 

All of which sell disposable diapers and paper products.

But is this "convenience" really worth it?

27.4 BILLION Disposable diapers end up in trash dumps per year.

It takes an estimated 250-500 years for ONE diaper to decompose.

Convenient "Science" is killing our environment.  

Convenient Education is hurting our future generations.

I want to promote teaching that doesn't teach the students what to think, but HOW to think.  Inquiry based teaching allows this process to occur.  I want students to realize that science isn't just a subject in school, but that it happens everyday all around us.  I would like to serve as an inspiration for my kids to be aware of what is going on around them in the environment and in their homes.

Come back next week when we get down and dirty in the garage!