TUESDAY, Sept. 24

Today we were treated to the THINK! ENERGY program sponsored by the National Energy Foundation.  For this program, we had two speakers come to our classroom and teach us about energy, sharing information about:

• What energy is
• Where energy comes from 
• How we produce energy
• How we use energy
• How to become more energy efficient through giving our homes efficiency makeovers

As Creation Keepers of God's world, that last bullet point is crucial to fulfilling our cultural mandate here on earth.  To that end, your child is bringing home a THINK! ENERGY Take Action Kit today.  This kit will ask you and your child to work on some energy related changes in your home.  There is a Student Guide included in the kit that will walk you through everything you can do with your kit.  Additionally, there is a white Home Energy Worksheet coming home today.  That worksheet is homework and will be due back to school by Tuesday, October 8.  (I do not need the Family Activity Guide book back.)  That gives you a couple weeks to read through and work through the guide and complete the experiments and installations provided.  Please note, if you are not interested in installing everything in the kit, you do not have to!  The white home energy sheet simply asks if you installed the products or not.  We still get credit toward the grant for the rest of the work you do, even if you do not install everything.

In your kit you will find:

• an energy efficient shower head (complete the flow test experiment - bag is included - before and after installation)
• a kitchen faucet aerator (complete the flow test experiment - bag is included - before and after installation)
• bathroom faucet aerators (complete the flow test experiment - bag is included - before and after installation)
• plumber's tape to help with installation
• a shower timer to put on the wall in your shower - an efficient shower is no longer than 5 minutes
• a small scratch and sniff sticker to help you learn to identify the scent of natural gas (natural gas has no smell so an odorant called mercaptan is added as a safety feature so you can smell it and GET OUT of the house before there is an explosion)
• "Turn it off" stickers to place on the switches of the lights that are most frequently left on in your home
• two 60W LED lightbulb
• a night light

If you are nervous about knowing how to do all this, there are instructions included for most of the items (either on the packaging or in the student guide).  There is also a website where you can view how-to videos:  www.ThinkEnergy.org/eu

I was SO impressed by the presentation this week - it was informative, entertaining, and engaging (we acted out the creation of electricity from gas, we created complete circuits with our bodies, and we took kinetic energy brain breaks as we learned new terms and vocab throughout the presentation).

We learned SO much about Energy and our role as stewards of our resources.  Coming in the spring of 4th grade, we will complete a science unit on this same topic, and will be able to refer back to what we learned through this presentation this week and the changes you will be making in your home.  This Take Action Kit is WAY more valuable than any paper homework I could ever assign while doing the unit this coming spring.  Plus, returning the completed Home Energy Worksheet will earn your child a THINK! ENERGY color changing pencil.

One added benefit of this assignment - if we get 100% participation, our class will be awarded a $100 grant to be used for educational purposes in our classroom.  What a treat!  The kids are already telling me what we should buy with our money!

I grabbed my camera partway through the presentation in order to capture some of the learning.  Early on, they used students to model the process of producing energy.

 The following photos show the students making a complete circuit by allowing the electricity to flow through their bodies in a circle and turning on the "energy stick" that is held between two students' hands.  If there was a break in the circle, the electricity couldn't flow.  Next they added a piece of aluminum foil (a conductor) to the circle to see if the "energy stick" would still turn on.  And finally they added a piece of paper (an insulator) to the circle to see if the "energy stick" would turn on.

Again, THANK YOU in advance, for taking on this energy challenge in your home.  Once your child returns the completed Home Energy Worksheet, we will send in to the company to claim our grant.  But the lasting impact of this assignment is much more valuable - learning to care for and preserve the resources God has given us!  We are being Creation Keepers!