Kids have a natural curiosity to learn about our planet and how things work on it, they also seem to get pretty enthused when it comes to working out ways to protect our planet, locally, globally, physically and spiritually…kids are caring, and it is amazing to witness the ideas and how absorbed children get within those ideas when we set off on a task to save our planet and our people from any number of problems we are plagued with at the moment!
It has direct meaning, it is their world, and as a family we integrate all learning areas into these saving the planet quests! Mandarin always included! Despite their natural caring attitude though, we live in a world where today’s children can take things for granted. Energy use, and its consequences for us and our planet, is one of the things that can be pretty hard to get our heads around. It seems to be a common problem…kids, and even lots of adults take energy for granted. We leave a room and leave the light on. We watch TV, go onto something else, and leave the TV on. We run air conditioners endlessly. How can we bring an awareness to think about saving this energy?
As a family we are on an ever developing energy exploring journey, but it is the Mandarin part that is relevant to this blog! So our kids made the above art works, to hang around at certain parts of the house, to remind us to ‘Turn it Off! They wrote the message in Chinese, as not only will it help us to remember the Chinese, the extra work the brain has to do to read it in a second language will help the brain actually act on the notice!! We also learned the song ‘Turn it Off!’ by Groovi Pauli on his Green Album. This way we can actually sing the song when we see the notice. Get his album from above link, it has lots of songs to help kids save the planet in Mandarin!
I made a ‘Turn it off Powerpoint’ with the lyrics of the song on, with images to help students with the meaning of each line. Singing this song with kinaesthetic gesture also helps reinforce the meaning. Click here to download it turn it off pp
Please feel free to copy and paste the Chinese characters in the powerpoint so kids can write them on their own arty signs for around the home or the school, to help remind us all to ‘Turn it Off!’ Any other ideas to help awareness of saving energy, especially in Mandarin, welcome!