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Archive for “Education for Sustainability” category
Showing results 326 - 330 of 389 for the category: Education for Sustainability.
20 Nov 2006
Getting young people, boys in particular, to be quiet and focused in a woodland is quite a task. Getting them to become aware of their surroundings, to experience the sounds, smells and feelings of being in a wood can be hard work. It would be great, therefore, to have an exercise which brought boys into a sense of complete awareness yet of which they were unaware. This exercise is called ‘Kick the Can’ and is a years old game but one which I have also found to be very powerful with adults. It places you in a woodland with all your senses heightened, rooted to one place, intensely aware of your surroundings.
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16 Nov 2006
Before the Earthwalk I give everybody a leaf, which I have chosen for their beautiful patterning. Tell them they are their tickets for the Earthwalk. When you arrive at the entrance to the woods you can pretend to check them, like tickets, as if they were going to the cinema. Tell them to hold onto their leaves as they will need them. To do this exercise you will need to have made your ‘slides’, made from cardboard, about 5″ square and hinged so you can open them to put your leaves in the middle. I then number them, and make sure I have one for each person, numbered from 1 to that number. I also write Kodak on them, to make them look a bit more like real slides!
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15 Nov 2006
Here is another exercise from Earth Education that is as effective with adults as with children. Simply make some small artists pallette-shaped pieces of card about 3″ by 2″, and put double sided sticky tape on them. When you are out with your group in a (preferably broadleaved) woodland, make the observation to the group that although as you look around you in the wood here it all looks to be just two colours, green and brown, if you look closely you will be able to find all the colours an artist would need. Invite them to just take ‘dabs’, tiny pieces, of leaves, bark, moss, fungi, clay, whatever, to try and build a full spectrum of colours. It can take 20 – 30 minutes to do this, and people are completely engrossed.
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13 Nov 2006
An Earthwalk is a wonderful exercise for getting people out into Nature and seeing it in a completely different way. Originally developed for using with children ages 10-13, I use it with adults, and have seen the power of its affect on all ages. I once taught a course in Ireland, and one man who was in the Gardai, sad afterwards he was completely blown away by it. He subsequently left the Gardai and opened a shop selling green paints and so on… . Over the next few days I’ll tell you my 5 favourite Earthwalk activities.
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10 Nov 2006
The last two events in the Transition Town Totnes programme are two of the most exciting. We are delighted firstly to be able to welcome **Richard Heinberg**, the author of The Party’s Over, Powerdown and his new book The Oil Depletion Protocol to Totnes. On Wednesday 22nd November he will be giving one of only two public talks on his short visit to the UK, with the title **“Peak Oil: Local Solutions to a Global Challenge
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Getting young people, boys in particular, to be quiet and focused in a woodland is quite a task. Getting them to become aware of their surroundings, to experience the sounds, smells and feelings of being in a wood can be hard work. It would be great, therefore, to have an exercise which brought boys into a sense of complete awareness yet of which they were unaware. This exercise is called ‘Kick the Can’ and is a years old game but one which I have also found to be very powerful with adults. It places you in a woodland with all your senses heightened, rooted to one place, intensely aware of your surroundings.
