Kindergarten – 2nd Grade
Lesson Plans
Love Letter to Nature
Description: This lesson plan starts off with a book called “The Thing About Bees: A Love Letter.” In the story the author writes a letter to the bees, emphasizing their importance to the world as well as the importance to the author as an individual. After reading the book, the students will follow up with an activity in which they write love letters to aspects of nature that come across as “scary” to them. These aspects, primarily being bugs! Insects are very important to our ecosystem and teaching children why we must respect them, allows for them to understand the importance of nature and other creatures that exist within our ecosystem. During this level of development, we are focusing on emphasizing how we must care about the environment during the present, rather than emphasizing what has and still is being done to harm the environment. We are using this tactic with this age to not leave the children feeling hopeless, but still help give them an understanding of what needs to be done to live reciprocally with nature. During this lesson, teachers should focus on teaching the kids how to respect insects and other living organisms in nature, as well as emphasize that ecosystems would not be successful without the help from little critters!
Collage of Concerns
Description: This lesson plan emphasizes the importance of standing up for what you believe in. While this lesson broadly focuses on social justice, to make this lesson more targeted, teachers should talk about the environmental justice movement and action that is being taken by their community to make a more sustainable future for all. While doing this activity, teachers should inspire students to make art or public displays about why they care about the environment. This may also be a good opportunity for teachers to explain the power of community building and the change that can be made by working together with one another. This activity can be done individually, but it is recommend that it is done as a class where every student is contributing their ideas equally.
Musical Movement Showcase
Description: This lesson plan focuses on using movement as a way to convey a message. Often, in traditional learning settings, students are expected to learn only through reading and writing. This activity allows for students to engage and learn through movement and performance. This lesson plan should be used to teach students about what, the way it runs, and the importance of water as a whole. Teachers should connect students to Cayuga Lake and help them understand the importance of Cayuga Lake to Ithaca as a community. In this musical, students could present an issue that is currently faced by Cayuga Lake (ie. HABs, Trash in the Lake, Unsafe Drinking Water) and come up with potential solutions or ways in which the community can mitigate the problem. This lesson plan can be paired with the book “We are Water Protectors” in which the main character fights, with the help of her community, to protect the water that provides her with so much nourishment. This book will help to inspire the students to take care of the water systems, and provide them with a basic understanding of what it means to be an advocate for the Earth.
Books
Does Earth Feel? By Marc Majewski
Description: Majewski’s debut proves quietly engaging, with textural acrylic artwork and simple, emotion-centered questions to help children recontextualize how they view Earth. Each left-hand page offers a single question against a natural-colored background, anthropomorphizing the planet with a spare refrain: “Does Earth feel…?” The corresponding right-hand page shows a colorful visual representation of each question, portraying humans as minuscule and emphasizing natural landscapes: a depiction of a gray, polluted city accompanies “Does Earth feel sick?” and a scene of a thriving green forest attends “Does Earth feel alive?” The final question breaks the fourth wall to address the reader directly (“And you, what do you want Earth to feel?”), ending this meditative picture book on a thought-provoking note.