Children Communicating Care Through Curiosity Walks

Abstract

Children experience and grapple with the ongoing effects of climate change in their daily lives. While they did not cause climate change nor should they have to solve it, children deserve educational opportunities to understand why and how it occurs as they prepare to address it. In this Methods and Strategies article, we share how children engaged in place-based art, science, and literacy activities designed to support them in further cultivating relationships with their ecological community and to communicate their findings with other children engaging in the same process across the three coastal communities of Boston, Toronto, and San Diego. Specifically, we highlight how crafting representations of their noticings and wonderings from family walks in their ecological communities supported children to analyze the interactions within ecosystems and express concern and care for the natural world as they engaged in the science practice of asking questions. We share how elementary teachers can support children in cultivating relationships with their local community as they make observations and ask questions to understand how climate change impacts their ecological communities.

Keywords:

• K–2
• 3–5
• K–12 Framework
• asking questions and defining problems
• ecosystems
• interactions
• energy
• and dynamics
• NGSS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT/FUNDING

Coastal Climate Kids draws upon re­search supported by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathleen Schenkel

Kathleen Schenkel ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at San Diego State University.

Cassie J. Brownell

Cassie J. Brownell ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

Jon M. Wargo

Jon M. Wargo ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the University of Michigan.