“Stoopid Gifts” Life-Cycle Presentations by

Students

Life CyclesHow to teach about life cycles:

1) Draw a picture of a carton of milk on the board. Tell the students that this may seem like a environmentally friendly product- it comes from a cow right?

2) Then add four arrows stemming from the diagram of the carton of milk. Label them: “Source”, “Carton”, “Preservation” and “Your house” and enclose them in a box.

3) Start with “Source”. Ask students where milk comes from. Draw the cow. Then ask what the cow eats? Branch of each item: water, grain etc. then branch off grain. How do you make grain? Branch off water, fertilizer, tractors harvesting grain.

4) Next move onto “Carton”. Ask students what is the carton made of? Branch off- cardboard/ paper, Ink, and wax/ceramic (makes shiny). Go back to paper and branch off trees. With “ink” branch off water and dyes.

5) Continue to move onto “Your House” ask kids how the milk gets transported from source (the cow) to our house. Branch off store, distributor, etc. then branch off transportation. Branch off “fuel” from transportation until you get to oil.

6) The begin branching off “Preservation”: refrigerator, preservatives, electricity, oil will be some answers for this category.

7) Lastly make a new category branched off of the carton of milk called “waste”. Branch off landfill and Garbage truck which uses more fuel (oil).

8) One the students get the idea of a life cycle explain that this is a minimal example and that you did not even discuss extraction of oil, metals, or even all the energy-intensive ways milk is actually produced.

9) Place each Stoopid gift diagram on the table. Place students into groups. Present each “Stoopid gift” to the class and ask for one group member to bring back one of the diagrams to their group.

10) Have each group do a lifecycle on a poster for their chosen product. 11) Have them present when finished.

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