What is our environment?
This guide is part of The Regenerators.
Our environment is the world around us.
The air that we breathe is part of our environment.
The land where we live, work and learn is part of our environment.
The land where we have fun is part of our environment too!
All the plants and animals on our planet are part of our environment.
Green spaces near your home and school are part of our environment.
So are forests and oceans. In fact, planet Earth is one big environment!
We are part of the environment
Our environment connects us to everything on Earth.
Air
The air that you breathe is improved by plants and other living things.
Food
We get the food that we eat from the environment. Sometimes this comes from nearby and sometimes it comes from further away.
Soil
The soil where we grow food is made of things that were once alive.
Materials
Lots of the materials we use to make things come from our environment.
Watch: Keeping our balance
Everything in our environment is connected.
If one part of our environment changes, everything else will change too. Find out in this video why it’s important to keep the environment in balance.
Narrator: The environment gives every living thing a safe place to live which is why we need to look after it.
Take this little bean. These usually grow in the ground but they can also grow in your classroom. They need soil, or a paper towel, sunlight and water.
If we give it too much or too little sun or water, it won’t grow. If we eat all the beans we grow, we have no more beans.
But if we plant some of them and don’t take more than the environment can give us, we could have an endless supply of beans! We call this sustainability. Plants and animals live in a balance in nature too.
This tree is the perfect home for things like birds, squirrels and bugs. It cleans the air we breath and it can grow thanks to the soil, water and sunlight it gets.
This worm lives in the soil below the tree, where it has a great time just digging around, chomping up the dead leaves and keeping the soil healthy.
And just here is the perfect place for this fish to live, surrounded by insects and pondlife.
When everything is in balance, we get to enjoy the environment.
If we disturb this balance it can be a problem for the thing that live there. Maybe, we plant a load of beans where they wouldn’t normally grow. They could take over where things already live.
Or maybe we chop down the tree. Or maybe we put a building where the pond was. But we still need to build things like houses, hospitals and schools.
We just need to think about our environment when we’re doing it. If we make sure there are spaces for plants and animals, we can protect these ecosystems.
That classroom bean could be the start of a vegetable patch in a school garden. And having more nature around us, makes us happier and healthier too! We all depend on the environment around us to live, so if we all help conserve a little piece of it, together it will make a huge difference.
How can I help?
Here are three ways that we can help to look after our environment.
Reduce the number of things we buy in the first place. This means we throw fewer things away.
Reuse things again. Instead of buying a new toy, see if you could swap with a friend!
Recycle something if it is too old or broken. Parts of it can be made into something else. This stops the things we have already taken from our environment from going to waste.
Activity: Looking after our environment quiz
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