Mid-Prairie elementary school students are in the middle of a week-long unit that highlights Mother Earth. Mid-Prairie West Elementary fourth grade teachers Mo Gingerich and Karen Bender, along with their colleagues, have spent the last handful of years turning their classes attention to Earth, the environment and climate related topics for the entire week of Earth Day. Their goal is to make sure that classes participate in a unique activity each day of the week. The two educators spoke with KCII news on Wednesday about what their students will be doing in class Thursday and Friday. “We are working with water. There are people that don’t have running or clean water. We’re going to do a STEM activity where they have to build the carrier and then carry the water on their head outside for an extended period of time. We base it on a book, Long Walk to Water and The Water Princess, to try to help raise awareness that we are very fortunate that we can just go turn on a faucet. Friday we wrap things up. There are five of us on our team and we all try to do a project. One of the teachers is recycling t-shirts into bags, we’ll learn about how cement is made and what minerals it uses from the Earth, and then they’ll get a garden stone to take home with them. We’ll talk about carbon footprints so we can raise awareness about the energy that they are using. We also have an outdoor learning classroom with an outdoor garden and a teacher will take students there and clean up.”
In the first three days of the week, students in fourth grade at Mid-Prairie West worked on outreach, recycling and composting projects, talked about what happens to used water bottles, made a project from recycled water bottles to take home, and worked with Washington County Conservation guests to make home made wind turbines to talk about wind and renewable energy sources. Gingerich and Bender shared what they hope students take away from the experience. “Thinking ahead that their actions could have global effect. We read a book called The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind, he taught himself how to build a wind turbine to get water for his family’s crops so they didn’t starve. One of my kids said ‘It’s interesting that we call some of these countries underdeveloped when they are coming up with maybe better solutions than we are for how to solve problems.’ I was just so happy that he was connecting the dots. We want to raise that awareness and hopefully they will become contributors to an eco-friendly world for all of us.”
For more information on the Earth Day Unit at the Mid-Prairie District, listen to the JJ Nichting Company In Touch With Southeast Iowa Program Friday, April 22nd with Gingerich and Bender.