This week’s theme:

Unsolved Mysteries – Climate Change

Fact of the day:

Every year on 5 June, people across the globe celebrate World Environment Day to raise environmental awareness. It’s an opportunity for us to think about how we can live greener lives.

Resources list:

Paper, pens, blue and green items; bottles, cartons and tubes from your recycling; cape, water, plastic bowl; natural objects; Youtube.

Activity 1:

What words do you already associate with ‘climate change’? Write the words down, decorate them, and cut them out. Look around your house for different green and blue pieces of fabric, clothes, and household items – these could be different textures, sizes and materials. Place your items on the floor in the shape of a green and blue world for you to place your words on top of.

Take a photo of your world and words and share it with us on our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or send it to melanie@purplepatcharts.org and we’ll put it online for you!

Activity 2:

Our ‘Carbon footprint’ is the mark (or the ‘impact’) that all of the things we do leaves on the planet and the environment. See this film for more info.

On a piece of paper, draw around your foot, or bring your shoe onto the tabletop and draw around its sole. Decorate and colour in the foot. Make a few of these to cut out. Stick the feet up around your house to remind yourself about things that affect your carbon footprint, and changes that you could make. Stick one up next to a light switch to remind you to turn it off when you leave the room. Stick one up next to your tap to remind yourself to stop the tap running while you brush your teeth. Stick one on your fridge to remind yourself to shut the fridge door properly. Stick one up next to your bins to remind yourself to put rubbish or recyclables into the correct one.

Activity 3:

One way that we can reduce our carbon footprint is to Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle & Compost.

Reducing means using less of resources such as plastic, water, electricity. Reusing means getting a lot of wear out of one item before it’s thrown out, this includes repairing things when they break rather than just buying new ones, and having reusable items, such as lunchboxes and coffee cups rather than using disposable items. Recycling is the process of sending items off to be converted into new products, such as plastic bottles being turned into new plastic items. Composting is when organic materials (such as plant trimmings, vegetable cuttings, eggshells and teabags) rot down and turn into compost rather than being thrown in the bin.

Make a persuasive poster or a song to remind people in your house about these things. What would you like people to do? You could remind people what items can be recycled (paper, cardboard and cartons, metal and cans, plastic, glass) and which can’t?

Activity 4:

Make a skittles or bowling game from empty pop bottles, juice cartons, or toilet tubes. When you’ve finished the game everything can go straight into your recycling bin!

Activity 5:

Become a climate superhero – reduce your own personal environmental impact by practicing to save water. Pick a superhero theme tune (it could be your favourite song), put on a superhero cape (it could be a tea towel, blanket or tablecloth cape) and outside design a course that you can take laps of. Fill a plastic bowl to the top with water and walk the course taking care not to spill a drop of water. Try doing the course again, but a bit quicker, still saving all of the water in your bowl. You could add obstacles or exercises at different points of the course that mean you have to be extra careful to preserve your water!

Activity 6:

See if you can find things in your house that start with the letters R.E.C.Y.C.L.E. For example, it could be a Rubber, Egg, Cardboard box, Yellow t-shirt, Clipboard, Letter, Envelope.

Activity 7:

Make 3 signs- ‘Plastic’, ‘Glass’ and ‘Paper’. Put the signs in different parts of your room. When the following words are read out, move to the sign that you think the items are made from.

Milk bottle; Pickle jar; Magazines; Newspaper; Junk mail; Jam jar; Cereal box; Water bottle; Ketchup bottle; Envelope; Shopping bag.

Can you think of any more of your own?

Activity 8:

If you go outside on a walk, or into your garden or outside area collect a few objects from the natural environment that you are drawn to. It could be sticks, stones, petals, leaves, feathers, seed pods, etc.

Imagine that your objects are mysterious and come up with a story about it (you could act the story out if you like). For example, a small twig could be a wizard’s staff that he uses to travel across the world with. A leaf could be the umbrella of a small talking shrew who uses his own language. A shell could be a boat for a tiny pirate elf. Have fun telling and acting out your stories!

Activity 9:

Have a dance to our playlist of songs about the environment.