Kid's Activities that Teach Health, Environmental Sustainability and Justice

The 7 foot tall Tree of Love and Justice

    
     I am in the process of creating hands-on activities for children that teach principles  related to peace, justice, health and sustainability. These will debut at Kansas City's first ever Midwest Soul Vegfest and be set up in the children's area.

   

   Below you will find descriptions and pictures of the various activities I have created. I will be updating this blog post over the next few weeks as I finish making more of more of the activities. My plan is to document everything with enough detail so that parents, teachers and activists can copy what I have done.

Earth In the Balance

Supplies:

16-20 same sized small containers, each crafted to have a picture of a meal or snack on it.  (I used chip canisters because that is what I had, but small boxes would work too -- as long as whatever you use -- all of them are identical.) Containers are weighted to reflect the overall environmental harm inherent in producing that meal. A large balance scale with space for exactly five of the containers on one side, and a pointer on the other is set up. A wooden, “stop” is placed in the balance to keep the balance perfectly horizontal for a child to load it up.  A board behind the pointer shows images on red of bad environmental outcomes that might be prevented if enough people alter their dietary choices, and images on green of outdoor spaces that look healthy.

How to play:

1. Before a child begins, make sure block of wood is in place (at intersection of balance arm and the post that holds it to keep balance horizontal while it's being loaded) and all food containers are lined up in a single line in front of the balance and out of its way.
   
2. Ask child, “Do you know what impact food has on our planet?”
3. Then say, “Most people probably have five meals and snacks each day.  Would you like to choose five meals and put them on the balance?
   
4. Encourage child to carefully place five of the containers on the left side of the balance.  When they are done, carefully remove the wood block and watch the arrow point to either the red or the green. Allow child to look at and think about what they see.
5. Ask, “Would you like to try that again?” (Remove containers and reset wood block so child can do it again..)

Here are close-ups of the red and green parts that the arrow points to:

Here is a close-up of what the part of the balance looks like that I created to hold the canisters. This is made from old pieces of rubber flooring, that I could easily cut with a scissor.

And here is an up-close look at some of the food images I put on the canisters:

     To figure out how much weight to put into each canister -- I used a small kitchen scale and gravel and played around with the scale testing out BOTH the weight per can AND the position on the scale.  Remember the laws of physics -- the farther a weight is from the point of balance on a scale -- the MORE downward force it will exert on the balance. Since animal agriculture harms the environment via multiple mechanisms -- any meal that had animal parts in it I weighted to make it alone tip that side of the scale to the floor.  (World Watch Institute has said that the desire to eat animal flesh is driving every category of environmental harm --- including species extinction, soil erosion, fresh water scarcity and climate change.)  Once I had the weights figured out, I changed out the gravel for concrete mix so that nothing would move around when the canisters are handled.

The Tree of Love and Justice

Supplies: A large cardboard tree and small cut-out shapes of birds, frogs, pieces of fruit, and caterpillars,  also have pens, markers and/or crayons for them to use.
 
Ask children:

1. Can you think of something that is unfair and bothers you?
2. Would you like to see it changed?
3. How would you make it different if you could?
4. Is this something you can see yourself working on at some point in your life?
5. As a first step to fixing this unfair thing, would you like to say something about it– and we will add it to our tree of love and justice?

 
Invite child to choose a cut-out to use. encourage them to write out (with help from their adult if necessary) the problem and to put their first name on it and color/decorate their shape.  Then put tape on the back and ask them to add it to the tree.  Invite them to have their photo taken in front of the tree.

The top part is a large flat piece of cardboard sponge-painted with leaves

The cardboard sign that will sit next to the tree.

Examples of cut-out shapes that children may select from

How Much Water?

     This activity is based upon this flyer produced by the Vegetarian Resource Group. Inside the flyer it lists the water footprint for a number of different foods. I selected 7 of those and found images for them and glued them onto little pieces of plywood.

     On the back side of each board I put images of little icons of gallons of water -- showing the number of gallons of water it takes to produce each of those foods.

Supplies: a set of wooden boards with photos of foods on the front of each board and icons showing how many gallons of water it takes to produce that food on the back Based upon facts in this VRG pamphlet.

How to do this activity:

1. Say to child: Most of the water on this planet is not fresh water because it has salt in it, and cannot be used for drinking or watering gardens. Fresh water is what plants and animals need to survive. The biggest use of fresh water is to produce our food. A single meal can use up more freshwater than three months of showers.
2. Ask child: How much water do you think it takes to produce each of these foods? Can you arrange these pictures in the order that shows how many gallons of water it takes to produce them?
3. When child is done, help them flip all the pictures over to show the images on their back side.
4. Ask child, “What did you just learn?”

There's more to come on this page.  I am still working on....

Race to Save the Ocean!

     This activity is a revision of the age-old popular magnetic fishing game that many of us played as children.  But instead of using a magnet-based "fishing pole" to remove, "fish" from the ocean, we are using a magnet-based "pollution grabbing stick to remove items that are threatening life in the ocean: Pieces of fishing nets, plastic bags, plastic straws and fishing lines and hooks. An added challenge in this version (which is more like what is happening in the real ocean) is that we are also racing against time.

This activity requires an "ocean" (which could be an empty wading pool, a blue cloth on the floor or what I have used here -- a section of a large cardboard box with the bottom cut out, the outside painted blue and extra creases added to the sides to turn it into a roundish ocean of sorts.) A pole with string at the end holding a magnet, and bag, piece of net, straw and fish hook with line attached. In order for the magnet to be able to pick up these items -- you must insert some metal into them.  I pinned a safety pin inside the plastic bag and to a section of netting that I cut from a bag of potatoes (it looks like fishing net!) so that they could be picked up by the magnet:

Then I cut thin strip from the lid of a can of tomatoes and inserted it INSIDE of a plastic drinking straw.  You can't even see it, and more importantly -- there are no sharp edges for a child to contact, but now the straw is attracted to the magnet.  To make the fishing hook and line, I cut a piece of cardboard in the shape of fish hook, and taped another strip cut from the lid of the can of tomatoes  and taped it to cardboard -- making sure that any possible sharp edges were completely covered by the tape.  Then I wrapped it in foil and put some tape around the whole thing to make sure the foil won't come off during use. Here is what it looked like before I covered it in foil:

     Though one could use an old hour-glass -- I thought it would be much more attention getting to have a GIANT hourglass -- and one that was not made of glass in case it got dropped.  So I created this one using two liter pop bottles, a glue gun and plastic salad boxes (for the very top and bottom.) with a layer of large clear packing tape over the glue-gunned joints just to make sure it doesn't fall apart.  Getting the sand to take exactly one minute to run through it took a little trial and error -- adding more glue gun plastic to narrow the inside tunnel between the two halves until it took about one minute for the sand to run through.  Also -- the sand had to baked VERY DRY in the sun before it would nicely fall through the hold and not clump up.

Do You Understand?

We all want to feel understood. Many problems or conflicts can be avoided by learning to listen well to others as well as to express ourselves clearly. This game lets us practice both of these skills.


Supplies: Two sets of matching blocks and a set up that creates two adjacent work spaces in a way that they can be shielded from each other and then easily revealed. Here is what I created to put accomplish this.  The middle (vertical) board can be slid in and out easily. 

How to do this activity: Invite 2 players to sit on opposite sides of the divided work space. Tell one of the players (player one) to create a design or build something from their blocks, and ask the other person (player two) to wait a minute while the first player does this.  When player one indicates they are done tell player two that it is their job to try to recreate and build exactly the same design that player one just created without looking at their design and only by talking back and forth.  Player one should try to describe how to build what they built and player two may ask any questions that they wish.

For example player one, using these pieces, might create something like this:

     Whatever design is created -- once player one has done their best to explain it to player two, and player two has done their best to ask whatever questions they want to better understand and then to build something exactly like what player one has built. The vertical divider is removed so that the two players can see the result.

Then the players should be invited to switch roles and play again.  The vertical divider is returned and this time player two begins by constructing their own original thing with the blocks, and the explaining their creation to player one who tried to reconstruct exactly the same thing.

When each player has had a chance in each role, the facilitator should ask them these questions:

1) What was this like for you?
2) What did you find most challenging?
3) What would have made this easier?
4) What did you learn?

Nutrient Density Puzzle

     This game is designed to teach the concept popularized by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, that our health is related to the nutrient density of our diet.  Fuhrman expresses this as:

H=N/C

Where H = Health, N= Nutrients and C=Calories. The basic idea is this.  Only one thing has ever been shown to increase lifespan in every species ever studied -- and that is caloric restriction as long as basic nutrient needs are met. So the idea is to maximize nutrients while minimizing calories.  In his book, eat to live Furhman shares his nutrient density scale that gives the following point values to foods:

• 100      raw leafy greens
• 48-50   non-starchy vegetables and beans/legumes
• 45         fruits
• 35         Starchy vegetables
• 3-15      Meats eggs milk cheese and fish
• 0- 1       refined oils and sweets

      In addition to these ratings, as I designed this game, I also took into account other health information such as; the WHO classifies red and processed meats as class two carcinogens, animal protein increases inflammation and fans the growth of existing cancers, egg consumption is linked with prostate cancer, while a single egg per week increases the likelihood of someone being diagnosed with diabetes.  Dry cooking of starchy foods produces acrylimide (which is carcinogenic) meat contains endotoxins which are also inflammatory.

     My point scoring attempts to reflect all of this science, in a broad simple way. 

    This game requires a special game board  -- essentially a space that can hold the equivalent of three cardboard circles.  The game board needed a lid/cover of some type that would hold all the puzzle pieces in place so that it could be turned over to see the star value on the backs. I created this game board from a large piece of cardboard about 3' by 4 ' which I folded in half along its 4 foot length -- so that one half could in essence be it's cover.  Then I took a piece of cardboard that was 18" by 4 feet and cut out and removed three cardboard circles from it and then glued what was left onto the inside of my folded cardboard to create a frame for the pieces.   Next I cut out small 4 inch diameter circles from the original cardboard piece - smack in the center of each larger cut-out circle so that once the game pieces are in place you can turn the thing over and see the backs of the pieces through the wholes.  Then I glued a thick piece of soft fabric to the lid part -- to help hold the pieces in place when it is closed and being turned over.  Here is what the finished game board looks like.  (I also put tape around the holes to make them sturdier and cover the scraggly cardboard edges.

     Next I created a variety of game pieces by creating a bunch of cardboard circles the right size to fit easily into the gameboard. Some were left whole some cut into half circles, quarter circles and one-eighth circles. Then various food pictures were cut out and glued onto the fractional circle pieces.  In general vegetables and fruits went onto  1/8 circles, so most often the amount of these people eat in a single serving is about 100 calories or less.  Beans and raw nuts on the other hand got a quarter circle -- because typically when people eat these, they eat about 200 calories worth. A large order of french fries is about 600 calories -- so it was placed on 3/4 of a circle. Here is what the front of some of the food pieces look like:

And then these next two pictures show 7 specific foods labeled with words for clarity on the front:

And then here are those very same pieces turned over so you can see the backs.  I used a bit of contact paper on the lower part of each piece that would provide a nice uniform background upon which I could put the stars.  I didn't worry about covering the entire back of the cardboard since only a small part of it would be visible through the holes. Notice too that the milk, turkey and eggs have no stars on them.  This is because these items have so few nutrients (mostly fiber and phytochemicals  which are the main factors positively associated with reductions in chronic disease) and/or known constituents that promote disease processes -- that these cancel out whatever nutrients these foods may also contain.

    Notice also that the stars are different colors.  I did this to be able to reflect the fact that getting a wide variety of different types of phytochemicals has also been linked with reductions in the major chronic diseases.  For example the onion family provides some phytochemicals not found in other vegetables, while beans as a group are the one food that every long-lived population eats and -- while the omission of bean eating appears linked with shorter a lifespan. I only had 6 different colors of stars to use and didn't want to make this part too complicated, but the scoring includes bonus points if at least 5 of the 6 different color stars can be seen, which reflects this the health benefits of eating a variety of types of plant foods. (Shown here -- the green is leafy greens, purple is most vegetables, silver (it looks gold but is really silver) was given to onions and mushrooms, yellow is fruit, red is  nuts and seeds, and blue is legumes.)

     And here are the sheets of instructions and how to score the game. These will be printed out and posted at the event.

      So here is an example of one way these three plates could be filled up.  The left plate has the puzzle piece showing potato chips.  This piece takes up the entire plate, because most of the time when people eat potato chips they easily consume around 800 calories (for purposes of creating this activity, each plate represents about 800 calories -- but that fact should not be mentioned in facilitating this activity as it will distract from the experience to be gained from going through this exercise.)  The middle plate has chocolate chip cookies, strawberries, milk, watermelon slices, olive oil and bananas, while the last plate has eggs, potatoes, butter and bread.

     Once the cover is folded down over the plates, they can be safely turned over to reveal the holes on the underside -- which allows the star-value of item selected to be seen and counted.  The stars roughly approximate the fiber and phytochemicals present in each food in addition to the known carcinogens in each food as well. (This fact need not be explicitly stated prior to a player getting to do this a few times.)  In some cases -- instead of stars there may be nothing -- or even a number to be subtracted (as shown below on the left -- for the potato chips.) This is because there may be components that are known to be carcinogenic (potato chips have acrylamide, and usually a big dose of highly processed oils, in addition to highly processed carbs.)