Explain to your class that everything on earth, including living things like animals and people, as well as non-living things like soil, water, air, and rocks, are all connected.

1. Pictures: Ask children to draw or provide a picture of something from our ecosystem. For example, a river, a stone, an ant, or the sun.

2. Circle Time: Have the children sit in a circle with their pictures.

3. Sharing and Connecting:

• One child starts by holding a ball of wool.

• They share what they have drawn.

• Other children raise their hands if they think their picture is connected.

• Select one child to explain their connection and pass the ball of wool to them.

• Continue until many connections are made, showing a complex visual of how everything in our ecosystem is linked.

     

     

  Continue investigating:

   

• Discuss how humans affect our ecosystem with things like plastic pollution and climate change.

• Children raise their hands if they think their animal or resource would be negatively affected.

• Selected children will release the wool strings they are holding each time an impact is mentioned.

• This demonstrates how the ecosystem can become fragmented and the extensive effects of environmental damage.

Explain to the children that just like the things in our ecosystem, people are connected too. We all have things in common that bring us closer together. 

Start by asking them to find someone who has the same favourite colour. When they find their match, they can stand together.
 

• Next, have them find someone who likes the same animal.

• Continue with other commonalities, such as having a sister or brother, liking the same food, or wearing the same type of shoes.

Discuss:

• How it felt to find someone else who likes or has the same things they do. Emphasise that these connections make us feel like we belong and are part of a bigger group.

• How everyone, even though they are different, can find something in common with others, creating friendships and a sense of community.