ANSBACH, Germany - Approximately 90 Ansbach elementary school children took a trip to the woods around the Oberdachstetten training range for lessons on being good environmental stewards April 22.
Garrison environmental division staff members set up the Earth Day event for children from all three elementary schools to help raise environmental awareness among community children.
Raising awareness in children now will hopefully protect the Earth for the future, said Christian Loos, core compliance manager for the garrison's environmental management division, who coordinated the day's events.
"We are here to raise awareness and educate the children about the importance of our environment," said Loos. "Keeping the environment healthy is vital to our future. Protection and conservation are key," he said. "The main thing is the children need to learn that if they want to use the environment, to get something from it, they have to protect the environment."
In order to learn a little bit about protecting the environment, the children were split up into five groups and rotated through five stations - forestry, senses, bees, sheep and firefighters.
The kinds of animals involved in the environmental process - like bees and how they need pollen from the plants to make honey - need to have a healthy environment, said Loos.
"We want to use the environment in a sustainable way which is about using the environment in a friendly way, so future generations can also use the products that come from the environment," he said.
But it is current generations that can impact the environment now and for the future, said Beverly Nett, fifth-grade teacher at the Illesheim school.
"This is the generation that needs to take care of our environment. To know the problems and correct them - be aware and be eco-friendly; they are responsible for their environment," she said.
And one student, 10-year-old Claire Torza, agreed.
"It is important to know what we are doing to the land and how we can fix it," she said.
As the children rotated through the stations, not only were the lessons sticky like honey for them, they were likewise for parents, too, like Amber Christensen.
"I think it is great that they are exposing them to things they have not seen before and helping them understand why we need to protect nature and the environment instead of keeping them in the classroom all the time - the hands-on learning sticks better," she said.
With the fun of environmental exposure, lessons learned are better retained from the environmental classroom, said fifth-grade teacher Eddie Jordan of Illesheim Elementary School.
"This brings nature to the children," he said. "Most of the time students learn about nature in the confines of the classroom - hands-on experience is sometimes the best way to go. Bringing them out into nature, in this setting, helps them build on other things they have learned in class."
With the huge educational opportunity an environmental classroom provides, fifth graders are the target age to learn about the Earth and what they can do to preserve their future, said Manfred Meyer, chief of the environmental management division.
"They are at the right age to learn all this. Through programs such as this, they will know about the environment in the future and will appreciate it more," he said.
"The goal is that the children develop an interest first in nature, that their behavior is more nature oriented. This way when they spread their knowledge with the other kids and with their parents, it will benefit all of us."
Social Sharing