Farm to Table Card Game

May 27, 2012 by Tiffany

Where does our food come from? How many places does the slice of cheese on our burger see before it ends up on our plate?

At Brooklyn Children's Museum, we teach a program for school groups called, "It's Easy Being Green." We cover topics like proper recycling, energy efficiency, and sustainable food choices. The food activity splits kids into groups; each group is responsible for piecing together the life cycle of one ingredient on a burger. They're given cards that each represent one phase in, for instance, the journey of a slice of cheese.

Now, here's the challenge: After students have pieced together the journey of their cheese (there are twenty cards or steps for the cheese alone!) they have to figure out how to remove pieces of the production-distribution-consumption-waste system to make the whole thing more sustainable. How can we get this slice of cheese to travel less? This activity can lead to great discussions on Farmer's Markets, local food, and composting.

Want to try this activity with your class? Email GoGreen[at]Brooklynkids.org for a PDF version of the full set of Hamburger life cycle cards!

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

February 27, 2012 by Tiffany

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is part of sustainable Brooklyn!

Methane is a gas found in rotting food and farts! It sounds (and smells) gross, but methane can also be used for fuel to create energy. This treatment plant collects methane and turns it into fuel. It is also the only wastewater treatment plant in the city open to the public. Learn more at the Visitor Center or check out the nature walk on site.

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is located at the corner of Greenpoint Avenue and Humboldt Street. Take the G toGreenpoint Avenue.

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is an example of Watch Waste.

The Dumpster Diver

January 18, 2012 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

We have featured books about recycling, composting, and garbage in the past. Today's book is about another form of waste management – reuse!

The Dumpster Diver by Janet S. Wong is the story of Steve the electrician and the kids who live in his building. Steve goes dumpster diving on a regular basis – he climbs into dumpsters and explores them to find salvageable items. Then, he and the kids fix these unwanted items up in creative ways.

One day, Steve gets hurt while dumpster diving and the kids come up with an idea – they go to every apartment in the building and ask for unwanted items BEFORE they end up in the dumpster.

This book does not glorify dumpster diving. Rather, it is designed to get kids thinking – is the thing I am throwing away really trash? Can it be fixed? Can it be turned into something new?

After reading The Dumpster Diver with students, have that conversation – what can I do with my waste rather than putting it in the trash?

At the end of the conversation, you might want to organize a swap exchange in your clas, where each kid brings in an unwanted book or toy and trades it with a classmate. You could work with the Parent Coordinator to organize a school-wide swap or participate in a Stop N'Swap.

The goal here is to get kids and adults thinking about ways to use their waste to prevent it from becoming trash… after all, one kid's trash is another kid's treasure!

NEED: All About Trash

January 13, 2012 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

A while ago, we mentioned the amazing resources out there from the National Energy Education Development Project (NEED). In addition to resources on teaching about types of energy and its sources, they also have resources for teaching about trash.

One page from the flip book; the following page explains paper that cannot be recycled

The Trash FlipBook is a resource designed for K-4 teachers that comprehensively explains waste and ways to reduce it. It starts with what trash it and where it goes (apparently, in the United States, 54% of waste is buried, 13% is burned, and 33% is recycled). Then, the book covers options for waste other than burying and burning (reduce, reuse, repair, compost, and recycle). The guide ends with some more advanced technical information for older students about plastics and landfill design.

A more advanced page for the interested class and teacher

Each page has an image on the front for students to view and ideas and talking points on the back for teacher use.

The Trash FlipBook is designed to be taught mostly through pictures. If you have older students (grades 3+) and would like your students to learn the same material through reading, check out Talking Trash, the upper elementary guide.

Finally, many of the NEED guides are now available in Spanish, if you have a bilingual class. The NEED materials are fantastic and free – check them out if you’re planning to teach about trash or energy!

NYC Teachers’ RRResource Guide

January 9, 2012 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

If you are teaching your K-5 class in New York City about waste management, trash, recycling, or any related topic, you have to check out the Department of Sanitation’s NYC Teachers’ RRResource Kit: RRR You Ready?. The guide contains materials for teaching about reducing, reusing, and recycling and the content is always specific to New York City. The guide contains:

Lesson plans and activity sheets for grades K-5 that comply with Department of Education standards.
Ideas for hands-on projects and long-term activities.
Extensive background information, including glossary sheets and additional resources.
VHS and DVD RRR videos on What Happens To Your Recyclables, offering a virtual tour of a recycling plant; and the story of the TrashMasters!,kids who learn how to reduce, reuse, and recycle at their school.
Literacy component: kids can read about waste using coloring books and DSNY/Marvel comic books (drawn from the TrashMasters! kids).

You can download materials online or fill out a request form and have print copies of the RRResources shipped to your school.

These really are incredible resources which will help you teach waste management in your classroom or get your entire K-5 school ready for a school-wide recycling program. What will you do with DSNY’s RRResources?

Waste Field Trips

January 6, 2012 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

Sounds like fun, right?

If you’re interested in recycling field trips, students cannot currently visit any of the recycling centers in New York City. However, the new recycling facility at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, due to open in late 2012 or early 2013, will include an education center where students can see the recycling process. For updates on the project, check out the Department of Sanitation’s page A Material Recovery Facility Grows in Brooklyn.

In addition, the Department of Sanitation also has a website that explains in words and pictures the process of recycling. You can use this information until the center in Sunset Park opens.

Fresh Kills then...

A field trip to a landfill might sound even less appealing. Consider instead a visit to Fresh Kills Park in Staten Island on the site of the former Fresh Kills Landfill, which when was once the largest landfill in the world. The new park was created by covering the landfill. Education programs offered at Fresh Kills Park focus on both its past as a waste disposal facility and its current ecological and sustainable use.

... and now.

Check out the City of New York Parks & Recreation’s website for more information. If you’re interested in visiting, email FreshkillsPark@parks.nyc.gov or call 212-788-8277 to arrange a personalized educational experience.

Trash, Landfills, and You

January 4, 2012 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

So, for the past two weeks we have been talking about what to do with waste to avoid trashing it – you can reduce, reuse, recycle, compost, and mulch. But, eventually, some things are just plain trash.

To help kids get engaged in the need to avoid trash, it's important to talk about where trash ends up… everything you put in a garbage bin eventually gets picked up by a garbage truck and from there taken to a landfill. Landfills are big places – and big is a hard idea for kids to imagine.

… so instead of starting with a landfill, start with the waste generated in your classroom in only one day.

Give each student a plastic bag and tie one end of it to their belt loops (have some lengths of string available in case they don’t have loops). For an entire day, have them throw everything they would normally put in the trash, recycling, or compost bin into the plastic bag. Do throw away smelly items and have students draw a picture of those items and keep the pictures in the plastic bag (e.g., a picture of an apple instead of carrying around the apple core).

At the end of the day, have each student dump the items out on a surface in the classroom. Have each student tally, list or draw the waste they generated. In addition to counting items, you could weigh, graph, or measure your waste in other ways. Once finished, pile all the waste from the entire class together and hold a class meeting. What will happen to these things when we really throw them away? Do students think they have generated a lot of waste or very little? Is there any way to make less waste tomorrow?

By now, students may already know about compost and recycling… finish the activity by asking – what happens to the things that can neither be recycled nor composted?

Use an image like the one below from Managua, Nicaragua to explain where trash ends up (click it for a higher resolution image).

The combination of collecting their own trash and this image should help students better understand trash and landfills. Check back in the next few days for more activities designed to do just that.

Books about Recycling (and Reusing)

December 31, 2011 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

Once you’ve watched a video about how recycling works, you may want some recycling books to use in your classroom. There are tons of titles out there – check these out at your local library to help students investigate recycling in more depth.

For the youngest students, try Don’t Throw That Away! by Lara Bergen. This board book shows creative projects where unwanted items are turned into fun new projects. This book is more about reuse than recycling, and it could get some fun ideas for classroom projects going.

Michael Recycle by Ellie Bethel is a rhyming story about fictional Michael Recycle, a superhero who turns one town from gross and garbageful to clean and recycling friendly. There are a number of sequels, including Michael Recycle Meets Litterbug Doug and Michael Recycle Saves Christmas. Michael Recycle is also available in Spanish.

For a narrative that follows a product before and after it is recycled, check out The Story of a Plastic Bottle by Alison Inches. This book shows the journey from raw material to plastic bottle to recycling plant to, finally, a fleece jacket. It is a clear story that will help kids understand that recycling isn’t just about what you do with waste; it’s about what the waste can become. Inches is also the author of The Adventures of an Aluminum Can and I Can Save the Earth!

Of course, there’s The Magic School Bus Gets Recycled, for older readers. The book follows Ms. Frizzle’s class as they hold a recycling drive and then go to the recycling center to see recycling in action.

If you want a non-fiction offering, try Reusing and Recycling by Charlotte Guillain. The reading level is high for early elementary readers, but the vivid photographs offset that somewhat.

These are only a fraction of the reuse and recycling books out there, not to mention all the books on composting and trash. Check back for more books about waste and waste management in 2012!

Recycle: What’s it all about?

December 30, 2011 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

We have talked about reducing your waste, reusing waste, composting and mulching… what’s left?

Recycling!

As we’ve pointed out before, recycling is a sustainable buzzword. But too often kids (and their adults) learn very little about the mechanics of recycling. So that is going to be our focus for the next few days.

If you’re teaching kids about recycling, start with a video. Here in New York City, the Department of Sanitation contracts recycling to certain companies. Pratt Industries is one such company – they buy half of New York City’s paper and take it to a factory on Staten Island, where it is turned into cardboard boxes.

Check out this video from Pratt Industries to see the process in action. The video is hosted on Vimeo, which mean you can watch it in your classroom.

When kids see the process of recycling, they better understand the concept – taking waste and turning into something new. Watching this video will take recycling from a buzzword to a concept that kids can relate to and understand.

MulchFest 2012

December 29, 2011 by Brooklyn Children's Museum

It’s the time for pine. If you celebrate Christmas or happen to love evergreens, you probably have a fantastic tree in your home right now… so what do you do when the needles fall off and the whole thing turns brown?

Shredded used wood is called mulch

Mulch it!

Like composting, mulching takes organic waste and turns it into something useful, keeping waste out of the landfill, which is always good.

Every year, New York City collects used Christmas trees and turns them into mulch. Mulch is a layer of protective wood chips placed in garden beds to prevent weeds, keep moisture in the soil, and reduce garden erosion.

Mulch helped this plant grow

In other words, your no longer wanted Christmas tree will be turned into a very useful product for gardeners. Mulching your tree is one form of waste management, like reducing, composting, and recycling. Rather than ending up in a landfill, you can turn your tree into mulch.

Join the fun by bringing your tree to a participating location on January 7th or January 8th, 2012. Check out the MulchFest website for a full list of drop-off locations. There are 70 locations throughout the five boroughs. At half of those locations, you can take the mulch home with you for use in your garden!

… and if you’re dropping a tree off at Brower Park, swing by the Brooklyn Children’s Museum next door and say hi!

Green Threads