Conservation is the prevention of wasteful use of resources. So, when we are talking about marine conservation, we are referring to the act of protecting the natural resources of the marine environment for the future. It’s a little challenging, at this stage, to introduce children to the concept of species, habitats, and ecosystems being resources. Particularly when we are referring to indirectly used resources – such as seagrass beds maintaining nursery grounds, fish thriving in those juvenile nursery grounds, and so on.
So, I focus on introducing some of the key ideas behind protecting natural resources and possible threats to marine life. It can be a daunting thing for children to learn – that not everything is going well, so I also talk about some of the things we can all do to help. For workbook 1 I have introduced: the concept of Marine Protected Areas, marine litter and pollution and recycling.
What’s in this post
Resources to get you started
I hope that I’ll soon have my own resources, tailor-made for this Marine Science Workbook 1, including lesson plans, PowerPoint slides and an activity for each section of the workbook. But alas, it is not yet so…dreamers may dream! In the meantime, marine conservation is one of the more popular subjects so luckily there are resources to fill the gaps. I recommend checking out encounter edu lessons for children ages 5-7 including ‘oceans and us’ and ‘oceans in crisis’ . If you have already introduced kids to the idea of litter then you can probably discuss marine litter pretty easily – but if not, here’s an example of a lesson plan on litter from eco schools.
Marine Protected Areas
Marine Protected Areas (also known as MPAs) are becoming more common. They are dedicated areas in the ocean (or on the coast) which have restrictions on activities to protect marine life and habitats. If you like to start your lessons with a video then Ocean Hero has this explanation of what an MPA is. I’ve suggested looking for the MPA geographically closest to you and looking up some basic information such as – where is it, how big is it and what lives there. Bringing bigger concepts closer to home can help bring them into focus.
Marine Litter and Pollution
The first concepts to grasp are the ideas that we have living and non-living things with man-made or natural materials. Once that’s understood there’s a leap into non-living, man-made things being discarded as litter (see resources above) before ending up in the ocean. Learn Bright has this video on water pollution and litter, whilst Ocean Hero’s has a couple of videos on plastic waste including this one here which talks about a plastic recycling scheme
Recycling
Talking about this is important, but it can also be a bit upsetting and a little bit doom and gloom. To help move from the negative emotion to the positive action it’s good for kids to have something which they can do. Yes, as you learn the bigger picture it’s a little bit ‘playing the fiddle whilst Rome burns’ but the idea isn’t to worry kids aged 5-7. Recycling is great for this. Moving from litter to recycling can be a great foundation for action. One way to do this is through an ‘educational’ litter pick. There’s a great example here from Herefordshire. This example builds to children thinking about how long these materials last in the environment. This is a good time to bring in the concept of 'reduce, reuse, recycle'.
I hope this helps!
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