enviroed4all.com.au

introduction

Welcome to my enviroed4all website (and its linked ‘children’ family farms and soils websites).

I am looking forward to sharing my environmental world with you, through activities, photos and resources!

I began this website in 2010 with some webpages which shared activities and ideas for IY Biodiversity, followed by the first United Nations Decade of Biodiversity (UNDB) year and the IY Forests in 2011.

During the 2011-2020 UNDB, I contributed to as a partner and as a contributor to IY’s and National Years that supported it, as well as other events that come under the broad scope of environment. This website contains pages which can be used for teaching and learning on many topics.

The ‘Otherways’ section is the main section inspired by the United Nations International Years, which seems to have made little impact on Australia and its educators. I have hoped to do something about this by finding suitable references for different levels of schooling and suggesting activities that they could be used for in my Otherways articles. They cover the broadest definition of the word ‘environment’ for it is not just the natural world, but the social and economic worlds we live in too that have impacts on our natural world. Hence there is a wide variety of topics in these articles, no less useful because it may no longer be that International Year. The summaries below indicate where activities and resources may be found for the different topics in the Otherways section of this website:

2024 camelids, types, Australian focus
2023 slogans, millets, peace talk
2022 basic sciences, floods, glass, artisanal fishing in a Victorian context
2021 fruits and vegetables, apples as a food system, seasonality, creativity as an economy
2020 bushfires, Co-vid 19, Bananas as an example of plant health issues
2019 Indigenous Languages focus on Victoria, picture books, food, and places names
2018 Scottish heritage example for Harmony Day, plastic focus for World Environment Day tsunamis and other threats to reefs
2017- tourism, Sustainable Development Goals
2016- pulses, nutrition, growing, Wimmera produce and links to pulses webpages
2015 – soils, nature, Soil Selfies, tests, colours, issues and links to Soil Selfies website.
2014- Family Farming, Small Island Developing States, issues of flooding and food in the Solomons, food security, sustainable family farming in Samoa.
2013 – Maths, shapes in the environment, space jump, images.
2012 – farming, nature in picture books
2011 – Forests, Chemistry; carbon-forest link
2010- Biodiversity, creek, garden, water/light plant needs, Spring’s changes

In 2014, my main focus was on the IY Family Farming, and for this I added a second website, aimed to create a website about the diversity of family farming. I was grateful in this endeavour to the wonderful farmers I met on-line from around the world.

In 2015, my main focus was on the IY Soils. For this I added a third website aimed at collecting photos of soils from many places to show it diversities, the Soils website. I was likewise grateful to the many people who contributed soil photos and information to this which I collated into Soil Selfies – taking a display of them to the Global Soils Week event in Berlin in April that year.

National Science Week was celebrating Australian Science in 2013, and for this I added the section on 20th C Australian Farming Inventions.

Read4Nature with 3 lists and info about picture books are good for learning about Nature from the images – mine, Wimmera Library users and Jeparit Primary School, linked to the 2012 National Year of Reading and the 2012 Australian Year of the Farmer.

Photo-based sections for learning about our Biodiversity in parts of the Wimmera, are:

“Biodiversity on the farm for Black Boxes by name and features
and “ph, salinity and the Trees” for three main trees
a photo challenge to identify a plant – weed and name it
a photo investigation of “What’s Biodiversity?” using a farm and a forest, with answers.

For some ‘how to’ teaching activities for working with Science and farming, see: