Hands-on Activities

Carbon Footprint

---

You will need:

• paint
• bristol board
• markers

We started off our carbon footprint activity by stamping a footprint on a large piece of bristol board. We thought black paint made the most sense…just like a carbon footprint. Brush the paint on the bottom of your child’s foot and then have your child stamp into the middle of the board. 

 

Once we had our footprint stamped on the poster it was time to start thinking about what contributes to a BIG carbon footprint.

These are some of the items that we came up with…

• Driving a car – burning fuel (gasoline)
• Flying in a plane – burning fuel (jet fuel)
• Wasting energy in our house – burning fuel (natural gas/coal/nuclear energy)
• Buying imported food – food that travels great distances – burning fuel (gasoline/jet fuel)
• Buying non-organic food – pesticide production and transportation burn fuel
• Using inefficient lights – burning fuel (natural gas/coal/nuclear energy)
• Wasting water at home – cleaning water uses fuel (natural gas/coal/nuclear energy)

Once we had our list of what leads to a BIG carbon footprint we started to brainstorm ways to make our carbon footprint smaller. This part of the activity was creative and a lot of fun. We discussed all the alternative and environmentally friendlier choices we could make.

When we had brainstormed a list, we used our markers to write our ideas on our carbon footprint poster.

Link

https://www.kitchencounterchronicle.com/what-is-carbon-footprint-stem-kids/

---

Topics covered

energy consumption, climate change, sustainability, environment and communities

---

Relevance

This simple carbon footprint activity for kids is a great introduction to the importance of being responsible for the choices we make every day. There are eco-friendly alternatives out there…we just have to stop and think.

---