TCS Green Day 2013

 Earth Day was celebrated at TCS with a Green Day designed and executed by the Oceans Group of the Green Team. This group spent weeks brainstorming ideas, culling the possibilities down to what was manageable, accounting for the wide range of age groups, having limited supplies and resources, and running the whole event from start to finish. These students demonstrated great initiative and leadership qualities. They designed activities to engage the Kindergarten through seventh grade students in environmental awareness and activism. There was a schedule for each class to rotate through three stations. The stations were: a bike-powered smoothie maker, a planting station, and a collaborative collage made from the environmental initiatives students are making to make the earth greener. The feedback and response was positive and enthusiastic. Overall, an educational and successful event. Many sixth graders were instrumental in making this day happen, and the rest of us enjoyed the fruits of their labor!

Thank you to the Green Team for your time, effort, and commitment to helping educate others on the environment.  Bravo!

Climate Change Map: Temperature Change

As we watched the Inconvenient Truth last week, we saw several graphs that showed temperature change over time. I found this neat website that has taken that concept one step further. You can move the marker anywhere in the world, a city, an island, a portion of an ocean or sea, and it will graph the temperature change over at least the last 5 years, sometimes even more.

Climate Change: New Scientist

Pretty cool.

Thanks to RadioLab's Robert Krulwich for bringing this to my attention.

Flood Maps

Inspired by our conversation in class and viewing of "The Inconvenient Truth,"KK  researched this neat website. It allows you to manipulate changes in the sea level and it shows where the new water levels will be.

The link is here: FLOOD MAPS

NOTE: The sea level changes are in meters. To convert it to feet, you can estimate by multiplying the number of meters by 3.

Would your house be ok?

EnviroSchool Comes to TCS

The TCS community had a rare opportunity today. The third through seventh grades participated in a wonderful program called EnviroSchool. We began the day with a visit from Dr. Zoolittle and Mother Meekat who shared a few creatures and challenged the students to a variety of games about animals and their habitats. 

We then broke up in to three groups to rotate through three stations: Splash Mobile, Green Machine and Recycling. Each involved making, doing, learning, exploring and thinking.

I think the most wonderful part of the day was watching students from different classes and grades get to know each other better, share knowledge, and have fun. Thank you to Denise P. for bringing the program to TCS and creating this wonderful learning and community building opportunity!