Earth Day Activities & Links

National Wildlife Week, April 21-27, 2003

The National Wildlife Federation provides resources to
help youth explore and learn more about nature, as does the World Wildlife
Fund.  http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlifeweek/about.html
http://www.worldwildlife.org/fun/kids.cfm
Here's another neat site that helps you discover more about wildlife in your
unit
by clicking on the map provided by Defenders of Wildlife
http://www.defenders.org/regional
 

- Earth Matters http://www.serviceunit

4.homestead.com/earthmatters.html
- Earth Day is Everyday Scavenger Hunt
http://jfg.girlscouts.org/Why/Environment/Earthday/scavengerhunt.htm
- Write Your Own Environmental Credo
http://jfg.girlscouts.org/Space/thcatch/Credo/Index.asp
- Earth Day Grocery Project  http://www.earthdaybags.org
- Download Wildflower Coloring Books http://www.nps.gov/plants/color
- FREE Environmental Educational Materials from the Environmental Protection
Agency http://www.epa.gov/Region5/enved/resources.html
 

Earth Day Information

Earth Day
 Tuesday, April 22 is Earth Day. The purpose of Earth Day is to promote a healthy environment and a peaceful, sustainable world. It is essential that each and every one of us does our part to help keep our environment healthy. Water, trees, energy, and biodiversity are the major elements of our environment. By keeping these elements clean, safe and healthy we can preserve our communit

ies for years to come.

Pure water is vital to our environment: Did you know that for every minute you spend in the shower 5-7 gallons of water is used? By conserving the amount of water we use, we can help preserve much-needed water supplies. Filling the bathtub up half way will save between 10-15 gallons of water, and turning the water off while brushing your teeth will save 2-3 gallons per minute. You can also conserve water by running the dishwasher only when it is full, and by using a self-closing nozzle on your hose.

Forests are the lungs of our planet: Forests purify the air, shelter our water and soil, and are a home to animals and plant life. Trees also conserve energy. According to the USDA Forest Service, trees properly placed around buildings/homes can reduce air conditioning needs by 30 percent and can save 20-50 percent in energy used for heating.

Energy use pollutes our air, water and ecosystems: Most of our earths energy is produced by coal, oil, natural gas and uranium. Unfortunately these very same resources pollute our environment. By conserving energy, we reduce pollution. The best way to conserve energy in your home is to have appliances that are energy efficient; an Energy Star equipped home uses 30 percent less energy and saves you money on monthly bills. If you would like more information go to http://www.energystar.gov/

Recycling is key to sustaining a healthy environment: In this decade, it is projected that Americans will throw away over 1 million tons of aluminum cans and foil, more than 11 million tons of glass bottles and jars, and nearly 10 - 20 million tons of newspaper. Almost all of this material could be recycled. The key is knowing where to recycle these items. The website, http://www.earth911.org/master.asp provides locations of Reuse and Recycling centers in your unit
. It also provides information on curbside recycling programs and locations for depositing car batteries, used tires, cell phones, televisions, and printer cartridges. Don't forget that April 22 is Earth Day: together we can protect the environment for future generations.
 

Eco-Games
Used with permission from webmaster who did the hard work of putting these together:
http://www.geocities.com/ivsugirlscouts/leaderlinks_files/EcoGames.doc.

Earth Connections Badge ☼ Eco-Explorer Try It
Web of Life I

Participants are to stand in a circle.  Each person in the room is given a name tag with a different aspect of nature written on it.  Some examples would be: worm, soil, rain, tree, grass, squirrel, sun, bird, tree.  One person is given a ball of yarn and chooses one thing that either she needs or one that needs her to survive in nature.  The "worm" could throw the yarn to soil (needed to live in) or to the bird (it is food for the bird).  The worm holds onto the end of the yarn.

Then the second person holds onto the yarn and throws the ball to another person she needs or that needs her. The yarn between each person should be kept taut.  Eventually - everyone will be holding yarn and the yarn should form a web.

The second part of the game is where the real learning comes in.  The leader of the group says something like "What would happen if we had no worms?  The worm steps forward and her yarn is no longer taut.  Who would this affect?  The yarn the soil and bird are holding is now loose.  Remove one object of nature and others are impacted.  You could also say something like "If you would be affected if we had no rain, step forward one step." 

The yarn would now be loose almost everywhere. The leader might also have to ask questions of girls who might not realize they are affected.  If the tree did not step forward you might ask why not. 

Web of Life II
Materials: A large ball of wool (the chunkier the better)

To Play: Girls form a circle, while standing. Leader holding ball of wool starts: unravel the wool a bit first, then holding on to the loose end, she says "I am the EARTH", then throws the wool ball across the circle to a girl on other side. This girl then thinks of something in nature that depends on/connects to the previous thing....i.e.. "I am the LAKE'S) that cover the Earth"; She then (unravels the wool a bit first) throws the ball to someone across the circle - remembering to HOLD ON TO THE PIECE OF WOOL that connects her to the first person. Play continues like this until everyone has had a turn/is connected, with each player, both by wool and by statements in turn (i.e.."I am the FISH that swims in the lake", "I am the MOSQUITO that feeds the fish", "I am the HUMAN that feeds the mosquito", I am the SUN that shines on the human.......)

The entire circle is now connected by a crisscrossed web of wool. Girls should be reminded to keep their wool tight throughout the game. Now leader says something like:" THERE HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE OIL SPILL" and tugs on her line of wool, and sits down, saying "When you feel a pull on your line: sit down". What happens naturally, is that eventually all participants should be sitting down. Discussion can ensue, as to the interconnectedness of all things in nature, etc.

Rabbits and Foxes
To play the game, you need a large open unit
, (it is a running game) with a way to mark boundaries, 2 buckets or other medium-sized containers, and a bunch of items to represent food such as popsicle sticks, bean bags, pebbles, etc.

Most of the players are rabbits; there can be one or several foxes depending on the number of players and the size of the space.  The rabbits line up at one end of the field (their home) and an empty bucket is placed behind that line.  A bucket full of "rabbit food" is placed behind the line at the other end of the field. 

To play the game, each rabbit needs to run across the field, pick up a single piece of rabbit food, run home and deposit it in the bucket without being tagged (eaten) by the fox.  After the rabbit does this 3 times, she has eaten enough to survive the winter, so she sits down behind the home line.

Rabbits can use their natural defenses to help them survive.  They can run fast, hide in their homes, or use camouflage to escape the fox.  If the rabbit freezes when the fox comes near, the fox cannot see her, so she will not get eaten.  The fox needs to eat 3 rabbits to survive the winter.  Each rabbit that gets eaten must go to "Bunny Heaven"  (a sideline)  until that round of the game is over. 

After all the rabbits have either arrived home with 3 pieces of rabbit food or have been eaten, the game begins again.  One round of the game usually lasts about 3 to 5 minutes, and the girls will play this over and over.  We usually give the foxes the option of changing every round, because they get very tired.  We also give a "30 seconds to get home" countdown when we have an over-competitive rabbit who moves 2 inches at a time and then freezes. 

You can vary the game by not replacing the rabbit food back into the bucket, so that there is less food and not all rabbits will survive, or adding extra foxes so that there are too many predators.  Then talk about how those changes affected who survived, and how that might be reflected in the wild. 

Kim’s Game with Nature Objects
Collect between 10 and 25 nature objects before the game begin.  Place all these objects on the ground in the middle of the circle.  Cover them.  Assemble the girls in a circle around the covered objects.  Remove the cover and allow them to study the objects for a certain period of time.  Cover the objects back up and see how many the girls can remember. 

Conservation
Equipment required: a number of paper plates or plastic placemats; about 2/3 as many plates as there are girls. For example, use 14 mats for 20 girls.

Place the mats a meter or so apart in a line, & a corresponding number of mats in a line facing them several meters away. Each mat is a nest, & can only hold 3 birds. (Mommy, Daddy & baby bird). The girls all stand in groups of 3 with one foot each touching a mat along one of the lines. These are the birds in their winter nesting grounds. You stand over at the opposite line of mats (summer nesting grounds) & yell "MIGRATE." They have to run from their nests to the opposite nests, & end up with 3 birds in each nest at the other mats (they can mix up). Then you are at the Winter nesting grounds, & you remove a mat saying something like, "Oh no, the developers came & drained a swampland for a new shopping centre. MIGRATE!" They run back to the other line. Now, the birds have less nests, & someone will be left out (they can stand off to the side). Then you go to the Summer nesting grounds & say "Oh no! The bulldozers came & dug up the meadow for a parking lot. MIGRATE!" & so on. I like to put a mat back every now & then saying, "Oh look, the Wexford Division Guides had a tree planting project, & there is reclaimed forest here!" Or they cleaned up a stream, or whatever. Then the girls off to the side can join back in. You can keep this up until they have run themselves out! This game certainly makes its point, you get a real sense of how the bird feels trying to compete for resources to survive in nature.

Oh, Deer
Assign two equal groups of girls to be Animals or Resources

Each turns its back on the other.  The resources must choose one of the following: Shelter - hands over head like house Food - Hands over stomach Water - Hands over mouth.  The animals must choose one resource to go for.

On the count of three they turn around. The Resources stand still and the animals must go and get what they have said they need by the hand signs. If they can't find a resource they die. If they get a resource that resource becomes a deer. You can watch the life cycle.

Variations:
Add in hunters (prevents horrid deaths, over kill)

Add disasters - there has been a forest fire - no shelter, other animals - no food, etc.

Add in predators.

Talk about how all of these affect life cycles - and use them as a teaching mechanism for why hunting can be both good and bad, how disasters affect animal life as well, what effect predators/competing species have on the animals.

Elements
Equipment: Hat, bean bag or frisby

Formation: circle

Select a person to go into the middle. The person in the middle call out of four words, EARTH, WATER, AIR or FIRE. The person in the middle throws the bean bag to someone in the circle. The person catching the bean bag must name something living in the element called out e.g. Earth- bear; Water- shark; Air- pigeon. If FIRE is called out the person catching it says nothing and returns it as soon as possible. You have 10 seconds to give an answer, and no repeats! If you can't answer, you go in the middle.  

Barnyard Bedlam
Materials:  Peanuts in the shell (enough for two handfuls for each girl).  You could also use small piles of sticks, rocks, or other small nature objects.

Preparations:  In a large field or lightly wooded unit
(where you can still see all the girls), shortly before game time, when the girls aren't around, have a leader distribute little piles of three or so peanuts in obvious and not obvious spots around the field -- at the base of tree, on top of a stump, in the shadow of a rock -- etc.  Make lots of piles if you want a long fun loud game!

Away from the site, divide the girls into two, three, or four groups, depending on the number playing. Make someone in each group the Farmer and the rest in each group choose an animal to be.  Each group must have a different animal. Practice making the animal sound. 

They cannot go out of bounds for safety reasons.

On "go", the animals (not farmers) from all groups will spread out and look for peanuts hidden around.

They cannot talk at any time!

Once an animal finds a hoard of peanuts, she does not touch them or talk about them. She stands with her toes pointing toward the peanuts and makes her animal's noise *AS LOUD AS SHE CAN*

The farmer has to listen for her animals' noises. When the Farmer hears her animals noises, she hustles over to her animal and picks up the peanuts. 

The "Bedlam" part comes in because:
1. There are girls everywhere making loud noises (strategy is for teams to split up so there could/should be 3 horses in different spots neighing!)

2. If a horse sees a pile and is neighing, a cow can run over and start mooing: whichever Farmer hears first and gets over, gets the peanuts.  The Farmers have to listen well, and judge which pile to pick up first.

Food Chain
Have food chain cards: Sun, plant, herbivore, primary carnivore (eats herbivores), secondary carnivore. We had phytoplankton, zooplankton, anchovy (filter feeder), tuna, then shark. You may want to pick local fauna. There was a bit of basic biological information on each card, including prey and predators.

The kids had to move about, reading their cards and others, and line up in  a food chain. If I recall correctly, we had several sets of cards, and if they didn't come out even, we handed out extra carnivore cards (after all, more than one predator can eat one prey).

Once they got lined up and looked around, the instructors went around and tapped  one kid in each line saying "OK, humans just caught all the tuna! Bad weather wiped out anchovies this year! Pollution wiped out the zooplankton (a mix of natural and man made disasters). That kid and everyone behind him/her went to one side of the room.

Then the instructor said something like "Hey, I just took out three or four parts of the chain. But how many other parts were affected when the chain was broken?

Fill the Bill
a. This game teaches how nature has adapted animals for different environments and foods, etc. by showing how different types of bird beaks are made for different types of food. Then, talk about what would happen if that type of food were gone because of man's impact on the birds' environment.

b. You will need tweezers, spoons, drinking straws to be the bird "bills". You will need marbles, uncooked rice, cups of water, and tiny bits of paper (confetti works, as do the paper circles from a hole puncher) to be the "food".

c. Divide the girls into pairs, one will be the mommy bird, and one the baby bird. Baby sits in the "nest" holding a bowl that will hold the food. Mommy brings the food to baby. (For older girls, forget the mommy/baby stuff and just have them bring food back to their nest). Give each mommy something to be the bill or beak of the bird. d. On "GO", the mommies rush to where the "food" is scattered around, and see what kinds of food their bill can get. They will discover that only the straw and spoon bills can get water. In fact, that is all the straw can get. The spoons are also good for the marbles. The tweezers (you could use chopsticks, too!) are good for the paper and rice. After a bit, stop and see who has the most food in their "nest". e. Now the learning part--talk about how different birds are adapted to eat different things. Talk about what would happen to the birds if their environment changed so they couldn't get that kind of food. Look in a bird book for different beak types that you were mimicking, and see what those birds eat, etc. Then go make bird feeders etc! 

Survival of the Fittest
Get a food supply: poker chips or big pasta pieces, etc

Say something to introduce concept: In the wild survival depends on an adequate food supply. In years of drought, or other weather hazards, including forest fires, the food supply may not be adequate, and some of the animals will die (careful on using die as some girls will freak).

Lay out food supply, just strew all over unit
--some can be "hidden"-hard to find places.

Give each girl a baggie to collect her food -- can call it a stomach.

Give them 5 minutes or so to forage for food.

Now say something like: Those of you who have 20 or more pieces of food, go over here (designate a spot). You will survive you were able to gather enough food to keep you healthy and strong and get through the winter.

Those of you with 10-19 pieces of food (send them to a spot)--you have enough food to sustain your life, you may not gain any weight and you definitely will be thin and in need of sustenance after winter. You probably will survive but you will be weaker.

Those of you with under 10 pieces of food are in danger of dying because you just could not gather enough food to take care of your needs now, let alone get you through the winter. You probably will die. 

Then go through what happens in the wild about survival of the fittest. 

Birds and Worms
You make a bunch of worms out of pipe cleaners (I usually bent them in half and twisted them) in all colors. It's best to play this outdoors in grass. Before the kids arrive, you toss the worms around on a medium size unit
. Have several worms available per child. Then each child is a bird and you can have them decide what bird to be if you want. The group stands outside the unit
and you tell them to go hunting or something like that and they are to come back with one worm, the first they see. Have them keep track of which worm they found first second, etc. The point is that generally they find all the red, orange, etc. colors first and the brown and green ones last. You can then discuss how coloration helps protect prey from predators. BTW, sometimes I have lost worms playing this game!