I hope all of you celebrated Earth Day this past Friday! Last week was Earth Week at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in New York City, and I headed down there for 3 days with other members of Cornell University’s Sustainable Design Team to teach kids about ways they could be more sustainable!
Since our group consists mostly of engineers and architects, we put a “modular building” spin on our exhibit. We built a huge modular structure that the kids could play in, and we brought gumdrops, marshmallows, and toothpicks to allow the kids to build their own modular structures! It was a tremendous amount of fun, and I had the opportunity to teach hundreds of kids about sustainable engineering, and how engineers can help to change the world. People are often quick to assume that going green means using renewable energy, but there are many other aspects to being sustainable. One other important aspect of being sustainable involves using more environmentally-aware building techniques, which is what we tried to emphasize.
On the third day, we led several workshops on composting, recycling, and planting. I was really impressed by how excited all the kids were to play with compost, find earthworms, and to identify which items could be recycled or composted. Each of the kisd got to pot their own plant and take it home with them.
The entire weekend was a great experience, and I can’t wait to do more things like this in the future!
Tons of pictures and more info are available on CUSD’s website. Check them out!
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