Introduction:
The children at the Kindergarten level will be introduced to air quality and how people affect the earth and its atmospheric cycles. It is the intent of this unit to introduce the concepts of:
1. atmosphere
2. air pollution
3. acid rain, smog
4. causes and effects
5. ways to make changes
The unit will start by reading (to the children) the story The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. The unit will take about two weeks to complete and cover four or more content areas of the State of Illinois Board of Education and its learning objectives and goals. Other stories will be read by teachers and activities will be implemented as part of the unit.
Content Area: Language Arts
Activity: Listening, Speaking, and Writing
Introduction/Background
This lesson will introduce to the children what pollutants are and how they get into the air. We will read the story The Lorax and children will discuss the facts about the area before the Once-ler came to the community. Comparisons before and after will be charted. In order to understand what the children already know we will do a KWL.
Materials:
1. Selected reading materials
2. KWL charts
3. Definitions for children
Lesson Objectives:
The students will be able to identify atmosphere, acid rain, pollution, etc, give oral reports on what they know /want to know/learn.
Activity: Acid Rain in your Area
Lesson Objective:
Children will be able:
1. to do simple science experience.
2. to identify what is an acid.
3. discuss effects (negative) on the environment.
4. to identify what is not an acid.
Materials:
rain water, clean baby food jars, eye droppers, red cabbage, hot plate/boiling, water measuring spoons, liquids to test, litmus paper
Teacher Preparation:
Do the experiment first!
Assemble Materials
Activity: Measure/Count pollutants outside by counting buses, cars, vans, and trucks.
Procedure:
Children and teacher and parent volunteers will review forms traffic surveys classroom practice and make predictions.
Parent will be assigned to four children and type of vehicle they are to count. There will be six groups. (Two groups will be counting cars/buses).
We will be outside for twenty minutes. Two groups will count cars, trucks, vans, buses which are putting out pollution.
Materials:
clip boards, pencils, form for charting, signed parent consent forms
Lesson Objectives:
The students will be able to identify:
1. different forms of vehicles
2. differentiate vehicles polluting air
Activity: Collecting litter from school yard front.
Procedure: Children will be predicting how much (paper, sticks, etc. we will collect (no glass, needles, etc.) daily and graphing number and weighing.
Materials:
Garbage bags,consent forms, scales, graph charts, pencils
Activity: Listening to Story "The Great Kapok Tree" and then complete the predictogram and a cause/effect frame.
Procedure:
Teacher will read the story and lead group discussion into answering the questions on the questions on the predictogram.
Cause/Effect Frame
Children will draw a picture showing the cause of the problem in the story "The Great Kapok Tree' and then draw what the effect of the cause. Teacher will assist in printing the cause (as described by child)
Materials:
Reading material "The Kapok Tree", Predictograms, Pencils, Cause/Effect Frames, Crayons
Discussion and dialogue about the Rain Forest and the effects of its loss.