The Green Story Circle: The National Sweater Day Edition!
The Project: Every month I get to introduce my son Loki’s kindergarten class to a new “green” story and lead them in an environmentally themed activity. And I’m looking for your brilliant ideas and recommendations to help me along!
February’s book: The Hockey Sweater (1985) by Roch Carrier
February’s activity: Making awesome Sweater Day reminder posters with as much crazy stuff as I could find!
Here’s how it went:
The Hockey Sweater is not exactly what you might call a “green” story. However it is a Canadian classic…the kind that my husband, in a questionable Quebecois accent, can recite by heart. For those of you who, like me, did not grow up in Canada, the story is about a little boy from a small village who one day outgrows his beloved Montreal Canadiens hockey sweater. His mother orders him a new one, all the way from Eatons in Toronto. But on the day the hockey sweater arrives, they realize a horrible mistake has occurred…the sweater is not that of the Canadiens but of (da-da-dahh!) the Maple Leafs!
I’m sure there’s a fantastic lesson plan in there, but I didn’t dig very deep for mine. It was a fun way to start talking about the sweaters we love, the sweaters we hate, and—most of all—why we should embrace them on February 9th for National Sweater Day.
If you’re a regular visitor, you probably know that on the 9th we’re asking folks to turn down their thermostats and turn up their wackiest sweaters to show their love for the planet. Energy conservation may seem like a pretty dry topic for five-year-olds (it kind of did to me). But the more I thought about it—and as we started to talk about it in the classroom—I realized that kids this age have tons of reference points for this discussion. At its core, conserving energy is about fairness and sharing. It’s about taking only as much as you need, so that everyone else gets some.
I used the metaphor of a birthday cake. Imagine one of your buddies at the party took a gi-normous slice—like half the cake! Could he eat that much? I asked. Nooo! He’d get a tummy ache! they shouted. And what would happen to all that left-over cake he couldn’t eat? I asked. It would go in the garbage! they replied. And would that be fair to all the other kids at the party who didn’t get enough? No! No! No! Well, it’s the same with the energy we use. We have to share it with everyone—people and nature. If we take more than we need, it’s wasting.
So, I said—getting down to the point, do we need our houses to be so hot in winter time that we can sit around in our underwear? Their shouts of “no” erupted into a fit of unmitigated laughter. That’s what you get for saying the word “underwear” to kindergarteners. But I’m pretty sure they got it.
Follow Up: After class, Loki’s wonderful teacher , Ms. Lewies, took some time to introduce me—and my package of Sweater Day info—to the Vice Principal and the head of the school’s eco-club. Even though I hadn’t given them much notice, everyone thought doing Sweater Day was a great idea. As I left, Ms Lewies was already discussing logistics with the school’s caretaker.
To learn more about what you can do at school or home to celebrate NSD, check out sweaterday.ca
