In 2016, the sixth year of the United Nations Decade of Biodiversity (UNDB) and the 2016 International Year of Pulses (IYP), enviroed4all(R) helped raise awareness of pulses, a group of plants with much diversity and benefits to people and their soils. I set up a Pulses webpage to share educational activities and resources for the IYP more fully that I was developing and using in incursion programs in the Wimmera, Australia.
My series of articles on Biodiversity/environmental education 
activities in the Home Education Network’s magazine Otherways, continued, moving on from Soils in 2015 to Pulses, in 2016, a group of seeds/plants that grow in soil- coming from a long history of biodiversity to be a very useful group of foods. I also wrote an introduction to the year for the Australian Association for Environmental Education .
Putting Pulses into environmental/sustainability education 
(OzEEnews March 2016, p3) This gave an overview of what pulses are, the IYP icon, aims, key messages and global education resource, as an introduction to articles for putting the IYP into EE and EfS.
from Soils to Pulses (issue 147) introduced the IYP and its aims and logo. 
This article had activities to especially to raise awareness of: what pulses are; the IYP aims, key messages and global education resource; and introduced activities that draw attention to the Thinking Skills used in exploring these for education.
Grow Pulses for Science ( issue 148) introduced investigations with
pulse seeds and their growth: from soaking and splitting them open, to seeing their sprouting a root and a shoot, to setting up a monitoring experiment to record how they grew, and with a digital example of seeds sprouting in case it wasn’t possible to do it in reality.
Nutritious Pulses (issue 149) provided learning activities for,
and with web links to support, the investigation of the food value side of the IYP: nutrition, food groups, nutrients and health, and with an overview of the new Victorian F-10 curriculum and the use of Venn Diagrams as an analysis tool.
Our Pulses & the world (issue 150) puts pulses into Science, 
Geography and History: seed breeding history for lupins ; actual areas under planting for 5 different pulses in the Wimmera-Mallee in 2016, and reasons for the differences; the key destinations of pulses grown in Australia from 2010-2014, and examples of pulse products that can be bought in Wimmera shops. It concludes with a review of the IYP from this series.
( issue 151) shows some of the activities from above being done by the Wimmera Home Education Group.
return to list of environmental articles in Otherways by IY from 2010- present
move on to Pulses webpage
page set up 20 January 2017