Maskihkiy Kistikan
Ready to Challenge Your Students?
The following suggestions aren't lessons... but they certainly could be! Depending on your goals and the passions of your students, here are some challenges you may want to introduce them to and encourage them to solve:
Challenge One: Celery Growth
Have your students take the base of a celery stalk, and place it in a jar. At the end of every day, have the students measure their celery stalk and investigate how long it take for it to grow into celery again!
Challenge Two: Living off the Land... in the City?
First Nations people were known for their ability to live off the land, never taking more than they needed and always giving back to Mother Earth in return. Unfortunately, due to colonization, many First Nations people have lost those skills, and the majority of your average urban schoolchildren never had them in the first place!
Propose the investigation of whether it is possible to live in the city and also live off the land. Would it be possible to live off the grid? Grow your own food? Here is an infographic that might help you get started: http://1bog.org/blog/live-off-the-land-2/
Challenge Three: Recycled Bottle Greenhouse
It is a huge future goal of mine to find a class that would have the energy to do this with me facilitating. So far my students haven't been into the construction side of things, and I refuse to force a project this large on a class that wouldn't be excited by it... However, imagine the possibilities! Teaching about the greenhouse effect, talking about recycling and reducing our waste. It reminds me a lot of how the FIrst Nations people who lived on the plains would use every bit of the buffalo, leaving nothing to waste. Even if we recycled these bottles, it is likely there would still be a huge amount of waste involved. Instead of having that happen, we would be even using the bottles themselves to help grow our plants! One of the best resources I have found to help guide a challenge like this is from the Moray Greenspace Education Project.