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Lesson Plan Image

Harnessing the Wind

Children will learn about a boy in Malawi who "harnessed the wind" to create energy and then create a collage that represents objects flowing in the wind.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

Steps

  • Step 1

    Discuss the use of wind as a renewable energy. Show images of various windmills including the iconic Dutch structures and the three-pronged turbines one might see locally in large fields. Ask children if they can imagine their life without electricity. Then tell the story of William Kamkwamba, who was born into relative poverty in Malawi, Africa. When a terrible drought struck his village, the farming family lost their crops and therefore their source of income. William, who was 14, began researching ways to improve their situation. He eventually learned how to build a windmill (out of scrap metal and old bicycle parts) that brought electricity to his home and allowed his family to pump the water they needed to farm the land.

  • Step 2

    Have children create a collage that represents objects blowing in the wind. They can cut or tear pieces of of paper and decorate them with crayons. Then they can glue portions of them onto construction paper and leave the ends loose so they can move.

  • Step 3

    Ask children to present their art and move them around to show how objects float in a breeze. Have a discussion about how renewable energy is better for the Earth than finite sources such as fossil fuels or nuclear fuels.

Standards

SCI: Design pictorial or graphic representations/models that are useful in communicating ideas.

SCI: Understand that events have causes, sometimes simple and sometimes multifaceted.

Adaptations

Have children form groups to choreograph a dance that suggests the wind moving objects.

Tell children about some other products that were invented by young people, such as earmuffs (by 15-year-old Chester Greenwood in 1877, who designed a wire frame and asked his grandmother to help sew on beaver skin), popsicles (by 11-year-old Frank Epperson, who accidentally left a cup of flavored water with a stirring stick in it outside in the cold overnight in 1905), and toy trucks (by Robert Patch who built a prototype out of bottle caps and cardboard and was granted a patent for the product when he was just six years old in 1963).