Tag: children

The Road-Kill Lesson Plan

It’s not unusual for volunteers to help collect data for environmental
studies like frog surveys or bird counts. But there’s another kind of
project going on that studies wildlife in a very different way. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports:

Science Center Brings Lessons Home

In school when kids learn about the environment… they often learn
about the devastation of the rain forests in South America; they learn
about lemurs in Madagascar…. and about the melting of the polar ice
caps. They don’t often learn about the environment in their own
hometowns. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports…
some school children are getting a chance to learn about the environment
around them and what they can do to protect it:

Midwest Kids Struggle With Obesity

The report card on fitness is in – and it concludes that there’s a lotof room for improvement. The federal government has been keeping trackof Americans’ heights and weights for more than 30 years now. And eachtime the survey is taken, it shows that the population is heavier. TheUpper Midwest is the heaviest region in the country. The Great LakesRadio Consortium’s Joan Siefert-Rose reports on the theories behind thisdramatic increase in obesity … and the special problems faced bychildren:

Are Today’s Kids Less Active?

The U-S Surgeon General recently declared childhood obesity as aproblem of epidemic proportion in this country. Over the last 30 years,children have been getting heavier, relative to their height. Today,one in five children is at least 20 percent above an optimal weight.The problem may not be so much what kids are eating … as it is what theyare doing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joan Siefert-Rose hasthis report:

Schools Test I-P-M

We usually hear about Integrated Pest Management – or I-P-M – as itrelates to agriculture. In that setting, it’s a way to help reduce oreliminate the amount of pesticides farmers use on their crops. But theconcept of I-P-M is catching on in other places too.As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports, somestates are taking Integrated Pest Management from the cornfields, righton into the classroom.

Commentary – Back to School Buying Frenzy

While millions of school kids are returning to classes, the retailers of the nation are counting up the profits from the back-to-school buying frenzy. But as Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston points out, maybe the need to have everything new for the start of school year is one lesson we don’t want to teach our children:

New Study Disputes Mercury Risk

A new study from the University of Rochester has concluded that eatingocean fish with low levels of mercury doesn’t pose any serious healthrisks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

A Summer Camp for the Children of Chernobyl

For many kids, summer camp means living in rustic cabins and taking part in outdoor activities. But some children are taking a break away from home to help them recover from the results of the Chernobyl accident. For the sixth year in a row, children from Belarus and Ukraine are spending the summer with families in Ohio…a visit some people believe is a matter of life or death. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Kevin Niedermier has more:

Commentary – Playing Hooky

The pressure to produce more with less is leaving us all feeling more than just a little bit worn out. As Great Lakes Radio Consortium Commentator Suzanne Elston has discovered, sometimes what we all need for re-fueling is a big back yard on a warm summer day: