plantyhamchuk:

The query was looking for resources on energy (renewable and non-renewable) for late elementary age students. Here’s some things I dug up that somewhat vary in age. The world is complicated and topics are interconnected; I firmly believe that children can understand and appreciate that. 

• EPA -  Lesson Plans, Teacher Guides and Online Environmental Resources for Educators
  
• PDF -  Solar Energy Fun Powered by the Sun - making a solar cooker from a pizza box and other fun projects
  
• National Geographic - Nonrenewable Energy - fabulous, eye-catching photos
  
• NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) - Educational Resources (K-12) - LOTS to choose from here
  
• Fossil Fuels: Air Pollution and the Greenhouse Effect  - a little experiment
  

Chelsea Green - one of the best publishers for practical solarpunk books. Interesting texts on natural building techniques, in addition to lots of DIY, gardening, and homesteading.

NOAA - Elementary Resources

Renewable Energy - background and definitions

Ducksters - Physics for Kids - energy - much simpler form of the above

Climate Kids from NASA

EIA - Energy Kids - Teacher Guide

OSU - Beyond Penguins and Bears - Teaching About Natural Resources and Energy Sources

Love to Know - Nonrenewable Energy Sources - pretty good fact sheet written by an ecologist

Wind Exchange - this is an awesome website full of maps from the US gov’t showing where all wind energy is installed, and also the potential wind energy that could be installed. Includes info on utility scale wind power and local distributed projects as well.

BBC - Global Resources Stock Check - from 2012, great info

BuiditSolar - Educational Projects - many projects to choose from, though some links may no longer work

Kidwind - multiple projects, if you dig into the PDFs it covers the science well

Energy flow charts - these are FANTASTIC!! Broken down to the state level for those in the US; also covers many many countries. Comparisons are very eye-opening. As a visual learner, these charts helped me get a much better grasp for where we are, in terms of energy consumption, than paragraphs of words. Compare any US state with Haiti to fully understand greater ecological, economic, and infrastructure issues. (This is not to pick on Haiti, you can just see the fully devastating effects of colonialism there, and it’s only about 700 miles from Florida.)

Real time wind map - USA - speaking of visual, this is wonderful and ties in with wind energy

Real time wind map - global - this is beautiful and informative. Play around with the ‘mode’ menu to see all kinds of information in real time.

EPA - a student’s guide to global climate change  - actually mentions pv solar! Here’s the full webpage, that staff archived so it wasn’t lost forever… 

————

Earth Guardians -  young environmental activists

Taking it Global - want to collaborate with other classrooms around the world? Lots of resources here

SustainUS - youth advocacy

Earthforce - training the young to be advocates and activists

I’m including these last 4, because while they may not fly in a lot of places and could get teachers in legit trouble, a lot of the materials I found frame things as individual problems to solve. Slapping a few solar panels on your house is not going to save us. It’s a start, but it’s just the beginning. You’ll also note that none of the materials actually cover the biggest things one could do to lighten their load on the earth (having one fewer child, one fewer airplane flight, going carfree, buying green energy, going veg*n). Individual changes matter - they add up the more people who engage in them - but we’re also gonna need bigger changes than that, and to do so, we’re going to need brave, resilient, educated, and resourceful kids. 

Resources compiled August 2018.