School Projects On Natural Resources

In recent decades, people have become more concerned with their environment. Part of the concern revolves around pollution, but part has to do with the depletion of natural resources. If you are trying to teach children about these natural resources, you might want to assign them projects related to the topic. There are a number of approaches you can take.

Give the students a take-home essay assignment in which they list and briefly describe natural energy resources. They can look at how abundant each resource is and the variation in availability depending on location, noting how solar power might work well in the Southwest, while coal or tidal power might work better in the New England. They should also review the drawbacks to certain types, such as the pollution potential of fission-based nuclear power or power from burning coal.

For younger students, a group project you might assign is to create a large collage of photos and images of sea food resources. These could be photos of fishing boats going out to sea and fish in fish-market stalls. They could also have pictures of fishermen pulling in nets or crab pots. In addition, if their own families happen to fish, they can include photos they have taken of their fishing trip.

A class video project would be another good idea. In this case, the children could use camcorders to take video (with permission) of logging operations in the area. They might also conduct respectful interviews of the loggers. To balance these views, they could contact a local environmental group to get its opinion on logging. Finally, they could visit a commercial tree farm to look at the alternatives to cutting down naturally grown trees. They could then use a simple video editor like Movie Maker to assemble their video.

A more complex project for older students would be to put up a web page looking at the struggle to obtain fresh water, which has become more of a problem in recent years. They could look at the causes of this shortage, such as commercial farming, overpopulation and climatic change. They could also consider some of the efforts being made to address the problem, including conservation measures such as using more efficient watering methods, low flush toilets and gray water for non-potable uses. They could also examine the use of desalination plants to create fresh water from sea water.