International Earth Day                                             

World Earth Day is an annual event designed to shine a light on the serious environmental problems we are facing, from climate crisis to air pollution and deforestation.

Each year on April, more than a billion people celebrate Earth Day to protect the planet from things like pollution and deforestation. 

 More than 13 million deaths around the world, including 1.4 million in Europe each year, are caused by avoidable environmental factors, WHO estimates. This figure takes into account the accelerating climate crisis, which is the single biggest health threat  facing humanity, but also air pollution, inadequate sanitation and clean water, exposure to chemical and radiation, and unsafe urban environment.

Our planet, our health

Our environmental provides the fundamental requirement for life: clean air and water, safe food and shelter. Human activities such as deforestation, trade and consumption of wild life and international travel are thought to have led to the emergence of COVID -19 and facilitated its global spread.  

Air pollution is the single most important environmental risk factor to human health. WHO estimates that around 7 million premature deaths every year due to the effects of air pollution. We need to reduce car dependency, improve public transport, and increase safe walking and cycling.

 

So how can we save our dear planet earth?

We can motivate young people to do their activity paperless  as nowadays people are motivated to reduce, reuse and recycle objects to the extend that can minimize  the waste that human produces every year.

How about Stellamarian contribution? Are we going to be passive in the movement of saving our planet or we are going to be the  good Samaritan  perpetrators ? Are we going to be the small ripples  in the ocean or be the big wave of movement in impacting the nation?

Here at Stellamaris Preschool , we implemented International Earth Day. We aim to introduce on how to save the environment to our future generation ,  so they would know not only letter and numbers in general. But how to connect those cognitive skills with their surrounding, how to establish a line between the real world, the environment with the academic skills that we attain at school. How to internalize the concept with the awareness and understanding of the real world. When we say , we want to make the earth happy or sad, we need to first determine the understanding of the word: earth, world, environment to the kids. The children acknowledgment depend on their character, nature , experience, and intellectual quotient of every child. One child understanding may differ than the other. Their understanding also depend on how much they see, feel and experience of the term the sad or happy  earth.

We implemented a Teachers’ Drama on How To Save The Environment , where the scenes of the simple drama derive from an act of being healthy, clean by motivating to throw waste in the trash can and what is the effect to mother earth if we litter everywhere all the time. We want  to send message to the kids that good healthy habits starts at an early age. We need the kids to pave through and be the pioneer  of saving the environment or be the architecture of their own future by having  solid basic principles.

We taught Kindergarten kids on what makes the earth happy, by acknowledging and accepting several actions: saving the electricity, conserve  water, do recycling, learn about  earth, try to compose things, walk a lot to places, instead of taking transportation and taking care of animal and insect. They also were taught on what makes the earth sad such as: car pollution, oil spill, used too many plastic, factory smoke, waste water, littering.

The Kindergartens  already master the self help skills that are needed to be independent and  also able to know  the social- emotional outcomes that are needed ,automatically the language and cognitive aspects are more developed than of their younger brothers and sisters. So for them it’s easier to know the concept of what makes the mother nature sad and happy.

Toddler & Nursery  performed dance wearing animal costumes. The concept of saving the planet may seem far catch for these young ones but through repetitive actions, these young minds in the end be able to connect the good fun memory  from the  experience to what they know in the class later on. When they grow up, as their brain developed , they will be able to connect all the experience that they have gone through with the adult and friends’ help in understanding what makes the earth sad or happy.

The Performance that were presented by the Preschoolers are called Student Led  Presentation. They magically interpreted  the act of saving the planet by performed publicly and defined their action through words, music and movement. These are the traits of holistic education that are significant in early childhood education. This Student Led Presentation is one of the Educational Pathway that Stellamaris has prepared for the students beside This is Me( Student Learning Conference). It is also one of our special program. It is a unique piece of product or idea or work  that is shown and explained to an audience.

The Students participation and spirit in doing the presentation for International  Earth Day  mark the beginning of an awakening of an era between establishing  a better world by going green make it sustainable to support the human to live in and preparing for the next  Stellamarian Road Map, AY 2023-2024 : I am Stellamarian ,I am Ready for Digital Transformation.

Save the EARTH , Lets GO GREEN,  GO PAPERLESS!!!!

By Vivid Quatricia Boer

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