A peek at my work

Today at work my coworker uploaded some photos of me teaching a youth activity last month for work. 10% of my time is dedicated to community education and outreach, and once a month my Department hosts a youth activity where we go out to all the homes that have kids, pick them up and bring them to the community center for an environmental science lesson.  They only go to school Monday through Thursday so we do our activities on one Friday per month.  I try not to post photos of the kids I work with, but there are no close-up, straight on face shots of them in the ones I will share, so hopefully that is ok. 

I taught a Project Wet lesson called "The Incredible Journey" where there are nine stations representing different components of the water cycle: river, lake, ocean, glacier, aquifer, clouds, animals, plants, and soil.  Each station has a bowl with a different color bead representing it.  I tell the kids they are transforming into a drop of water and going on their incredible journey, and then each kid gets a leather bracelet with one bead on it, and they find the station with their bead color.  At the station there is a poster with a list of what to do based on the roll of a die. For instance at the cloud station it says:

If you roll a

1:  Go to soil

2: Go to glacier

3: Go to lake

4: Go to ocean

5: Go to ocean

6: Stay in clouds

So the kid rolls the die and goes to where ever the directions say and add a bead to their bracelet.  It is definitely my favorite activity to teach and the kids love getting to make and take home their bracelet.  

I try to spread the stations out around our community park so in addition to learning they get physical exercise running around too.

At the end of the activity we provide the kids with a healthy snack and then take them back home.  It is not a mandatory program so our numbers vary and we have had anywhere from 2 kids to 25.