Your children are your own family’s future and our planet’s future. What your children learn today will, undoubtedly, impact tomorrow through their actions. The best time to get your children involved with global warming issues is when they are young so that you can tap into their natural curiosity. With “science” being considered a dry subject, you might wonder how to hold your children’s attention.
The answer is to make learning fun. Involve some “playtime” within your own children’s education and you’ll have a much more captive audience. One easy experiment you can introduce to your youngsters can begin to teach them about the power of solar energy. Your required materials are simple – all you will need are ice cubes, construction paper and a tray.
With the construction paper, select various colours (eg: white, yellow, brown, dark blue, red and black). Cut out squares of paper and space these out within your tray. Next, place six ice cubes in the tray – one ice cube on each square of construction paper. Find a sunny spot by a window to put your tray and ask your children for their best guesses as to what may happen. Of course, the ice will melt; however, will anything else occur?
It shouldn’t take long for the ice to begin softening. What your children will observe is that the cubes sitting on the darker coloured paper will dissolve quicker. You can explain that black material captures the sun’s heat much faster than lighter shades – imagine a black cat peacefully snoozing in the sun. This is the reason why the roofs of so many solar-powered homes are painted black.
Should your children need a further example to grasp this concept, bundle them up in black winter wear when they go outside to skate, toboggan or build a snow fort this winter … undoubtedly, they will be much warmer.
