Module 4: We Love Our Energy
We Love
Our Energy
CONNECT
Objective: to understand what changes happen when we take something from Earth to make energy; to understand that the choices humans make matter to all life
Vocabulary: pollution
Reading: Earth Hour
Hands-on Activity: Mining for Treasures
Earth Friends Lesson
Module 4: Lesson 4
Begin Lesson
move & discover: 5 minutes
Earth’s Energies
This is a repeated activity the children can do at the beginning of the lesson each week. This will help familiarize them with the different sources of energy that Earth provides.
We get energy to make and move and change things from Earth through our land, water, air, and sun.
LAND: Stomp your feet. Feel the land. We can dig up fossil fuels, like coal and oil, that we find buried deep down underground and burn them to make energy from fossil fuels. We can also pump up very hot water or steam that we find deep underground to make what is called geothermal energy.
WATER: Can you move your body like a wave? Throw your hands up in the air like a big, tall wave. Now let your hands come down like a wave crashing. That's called hydropower energy and that comes from moving water. Water move from up to down, like waves on the ocean or falling down a waterfall. There is a lot of water all over Earth that can give us energy.
AIR: Can you blow on your hand in front of you? Can you feel the air move on your fingers? The air is full of wind, and wind makes energy that we call wind power. Changes in Earth’s air temperature make wind.
SUN: Close your eyes. Can you see? The sun gives Earth a lot of light. We need light to see, and light also gives us energy. It's such a bright light we can't look right at it, but it can light up our world and we can make that sunlight into energy through solar power.
Curious Question
What happens to Earth when we dig up or drill to get energy? What happens when we make wind turbines or solar panels to get energy?
Allow the children to answer what happens to Earth in any way they think, even if it has nothing to do with Earth or that energy source.
Main Lesson
When we take something from Earth to make energy, something always changes.
fossil fuels: Fossil fuels are not renewable, because we can’t use them again. The remains of plants, animals, and dinosaurs that get buried deep down in the Earth become fossil fuels. It takes many, many years for Earth to make fossil fuels. We dig up and drill fossil fuels (like coal, natural gas, and oil) and burn them to make energy.
When we burn fossil fuels, we make pollution. Pollution makes Earth's blanket thicker and makes the land, water, and air dirty and unsafe for all life.
solar power, geothermal power, wind power, hydropower: These types of energies are renewable, because we can use sunlight and water and air and heat again and again to make our energy.
When we make solar panels, wind turbines, hydropower and geothermal plants to get our energy, we use materials from Earth, and some of the materials we cannot use again.
sit & discover: 7 minutes
Mining for Treasures
This activity will show the children what changes occur when you extract or remove something from a solid, like land.
Materials Needed: plates; chocolate chip cookies*; toothpicks
Preparation: Set up plates at the table. Give each child a chocolate chip cookie and 2 toothpicks.
Once everyone is sitting down, ask What do these cookies look like? Are they whole? Are they broken? Where are the chocolate chips? Can you see them? I bet you can pick up the cookie. But don't take a bite yet. We have important work to do. We're going to mine for chocolate chips.
Explain to the children they are going to mine for chocolate chips. The cookie is Earth and the chocolate chips are the energy. Use your toothpicks as tools to try to take the chocolate chips out of the cookie. After 5 minutes of mining, ask the children to look at their cookies. What happened to the cookies? Will the cookie make new chocolate chips? Does the cookie look like a safe place to live? What does your plate look like?
Afterward, you can let the children eat the cookie crumbs as you pass around whole cookies and talk about how you can’t put the broken chocolate chip cookies back together.
*Earth Friends recognizes the varied sensitivities around using food for play or learning. Mining for chocolate chips is not intended to be wasteful or disrespectful to other cultures and communities. The intention here is to teach the value of resources and the respect for what we are given. The cookies are individually plated and intended to be eaten.
If you wish to use a non-food item for this lesson, please do! An alternative is to mix small objects (such as rocks, marbles, beads) into a clay-based material. The soil or harden dough is your cookie. The objects are your treasures. Fill muffin tins halfway with mixed soil and set in a well-lit, dry place to harden for 48 hours. Using toothpicks, the children can mine for rocks, marbles, or beads.
Closing Sentiment
When humans take energy from Earth something else will change. Some energy is renewable and some is not, but any energy extraction causes change. Sometimes we create pollution. Sometimes we take what we can’t give back.
move & learn: 10 minutes
Use the photo book to show the children the different kinds of energy we get from land, water, air, and sun.
End Lesson
Teachers in the Classroom
Teacher Activity
Clean Up an Oil Spill
During this activity, the children can experience what is needed to clean up an oil spill in the water.
Materials Needed: glass or aluminum pan; water; olive oil; blue and orange food coloring; 2 medicine droppers; 2 spoons; 2 pieces of fabric
Preparation:
Fill the pan halfway with water.
Mix a few drops of blue and orange food coloring into ½ cup of oil (until it looks brown).
Add oil to the water.
Set out the clean-up stations-droppers, spoons, fabric.
Oil has spilled into the water, and we need to work together to clean it up. Oil is not safe for our plant and animal friends.
Encourage the children to use the tools from different stations to see what removes oil from the water. Bonus: put 1 or 2 feathers in the spill. What is it like to clean oil off of a bird feather? Is it easy? Is it hard? Is it possible?
Throughout the Week
Discuss: renewable versus nonrenewable energy. Using the images in We Love Our Energy, review the different types of energy with the children.
Explore: wind power in your environment. Take the recycled pinwheels outside and see where they spin. If you change where they are (on top of the playground or under a tree), do they spin faster or slower? Where can you find wind?
Reading: Earth Hour
Vocabulary: energy, power, renewable, pollution
Good Choices
I can learn about how humans can create power from renewable energy.
I can help adults keep the land, water, and air clean.
I can learn what changes when we take energy from Earth.
Vocabulary:
energy: Energy makes things move, change, and grow.
power: Humans use energy every day. We need energy to make things move and go and work. We call this power.
renewable: Some of the energy Earth gives us can be used again and again like light from the sun, movement from water, and wind in the air. When we use these energies, we won't run out of energy. Energy that we can't run out of or use all up is called renewable.
pollution: Pollution makes Earth's blanket thicker and makes the land, water, and air dirty and unsafe for all life.
Families at Home
Discover: the power of the sun. We learned that light from the sun gives us power, and we need power to cook. You've heard of s'mores over the fire, but have you heard of Solar S'mores? You can make a solar oven.
When your oven is ready to go, take it outside.
FIRST, adjust the flap to get the most sun as possible.
NEXT, prop it in position with a dowel rod or a stick.
NOW, assemble your s'mores. Place them on the black bottom of the oven, and sit back and let them cook!
This will take more patience than a regular oven, but on a sunny day, you'll have a gooey treat!
This whole activity may take a bit of time. You can choose a rainy day to make the solar oven and a sunny day to melt your s'mores.
Pretend: to mine for chocolate chips. We talked about what happens when humans dig up fossil fuels from Earth to use for energy.
Get out 2 plates, 2 chocolate chip cookies, and 2 sets of 2 toothpicks.
Ask your child to show you how to mine for chocolate chips. See how many you can get them out. What happens to your cookie? Alternatively, you can mine muffins for blueberries or banana bread for bananas and nuts.
