Kendyll Romine

A Scavenger Hunt is a great way to engage students outdoors. Divide the class into teams of three and send them on a mission! If the class is too large for three teams, consider letting half the class do another activity while half are divided into teams for the hunt. The basic GooseChase app is … Read more

Trees provide shelter and food for animals, emit oxygen, sequester carbon dioxide that otherwise might be trapping heat in the atmosphere, provide shade, and stabilize soil with their roots. It’s hard to imagine an Earth Day project that has greater impact than tree planting. Your class can select a species and order seedlings from Georgia … Read more

Tired of hearing what a negative impact humans have on the planet? Frustrated by feeling like BigFoot when you calculate your ecological or carbon footprint?  Handprinter.org lets you flip that mindset upside down and figure out how much Good you contribute to the world. Kids can adjust the parameters to see what actions they could … Read more

Maybe the nature in your schoolyard seems somewhat limited, and the nearest park is a long way away. Even when it seems there are more buildings around than trees, your neighborhood is still part of an urban ecosystem. Kids can use the “What’s Good in My Hood?” workbook by Akiima Price to discover the best … Read more

Seeds rolled up in clay and compost balls make a great portable garden-starter that can be used on campus or in wasteland areas where wildflowers would be welcome. Kids can research what species of wildflowers are native and important to birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinators in the area and ask for donations from local … Read more

Honeybees, who live in hives, are great pollinators but not native to the U.S. Our wild, native mason bees live alone and look for places to nest in small open cylinders such as hollow stems. But because we have cut down so many forests and paved over so many fields, it is harder for bees … Read more

Recycling is important, but the US does not have the capacity to process all the recyclables we produce. What would it take to change habits, reject single-use packaging and products, and live a “zero waste” lifestyle? Kids can measure their baseline level of trash by carrying around all the waste they generate in a 24 … Read more

Ever heard of energy vampires? They are appliances and electronics that use a lot of electricity even when in “sleep” or “standby” mode. Kids can use a watt meter such as the  Kill-A-Watt EZ meter to plug in appliances and see how much power they are “leaking.” Infrared thermometers make it easy to calculate the … Read more

Students can find out what organisms are living in their schoolyard (or backyard) with a cool new phone app called SEEK by I-Naturalist. It geolocates a user without any need to log in and provides pictures of plants, animals, fungi, insects and other organisms that live nearby. Students can earn digital badges by taking pictures … Read more