For Component Engaging Families Documenting Learning
Teachers can use the book to guide children’ s awareness of environmental issues and prompt them to think about how to respond to the weather events. For example, frame activities around care for the Earth rather than fear, and decide on tangible actions( recycling, planting trees, saving water) as a class.
Teachers can invite families to extend activities into the home. For example, have families continue a weather journal started in class to record the temperature and cloud cover over the weekend.
Teachers can record children’ s prior knowledge on chart paper before conducting an experiment. Revisit the chart afterward to update what children now know. Help children to identify any misconceptions they had, and discuss what they learned.
The book explains how to transform worried emotions into positive actions to protect the Earth by connecting readers with the natural world. For example, teachers can encourage actions that help conserve energy, such as turning off the lights when leaving a room.
Teachers can share a preview of the book with families and offer ideas for simple interactions with nature, such as walking in nature together, drawing animals they love, and discussing plans for action at home.
Teachers can observe children’ s art-making and role-playing. Consider collecting their artwork or photographing their role-play to display as collective classroom art.
One Teacher’ s Experience: Supporting Climate Conversations
Andree( the fourth author) is an art teacher at a New Orleans elementary school. She volunteered to participate in a project funded by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine that began with the codevelopment of a five-lesson science unit integrating location / place, art, literacy, and science learning. She worked with other teachers to personalize the lessons based on the experiences of the children in her area, which included flooding due to storms. The resulting unit included an illustrated story loosely based on the picture book Before the Saltwater Came, written by Wendy Wilson Billiot and set in a Louisiana marsh. The adapted story introduced the dilemma of an otter, Henry, and his family, who live in a marsh that is becoming increasingly salty due to changes in the local river system. Henry and his family see, smell, feel, and taste the changes to their home and must move upstream when food becomes scarce.
This story was selected because it introduced the concept of a habitat, presented a positive resolution to the characters’ problem, and included attractive images that enhanced the text. Most important, children could relate to Henry’ s experience: Months earlier, saltwater intrusion had threatened the drinking water of New Orleans residents, forcing many families to rely on bottled water. Besides living in the same location, the children and Henry also shared some activities( diving, playing) and a favorite food( crayfish).
Andree introduced the graphic story during her art classes across preschool, kindergarten, and first grade, displaying and reading each page. Afterward, she prompted children to consider their own experiences with a changing environment. Children were given a sheet of paper and a variety of mediums( colored pencils, crayons, markers) to illustrate their experiences. Children’ s drawings included representations of a family evacuating their home and going to a hotel with a hurricane approaching, a car stopping at a store for supplies, and a child and their parent sad to be leaving their old house for a new house.
Winter 2025 Young Children 45