10 Thinking about Waste and Creating Imaginary Environments

Digital

Teach children about how images can be manipulated and how easy it is to create fake photos. This activity will help them understand that not all images reflect reality and foster critical observation skills. This increases their sensitivity to environmental issues by making them alert to details that often go unnoticed. For example, social contradictions such as encouraging people to avoid using plastic bags while wrapping in plastic items to sell stuff cheaper and force buyers to buy more quantity.

Making it Inclusive

Make sure you use examples to point out that everyone belongs even if their imagination is different from the majority, and how variation in imagination increases everyone’s ability to imagine. Point out in the history of humanity people who imagined very different things contributed to the development of science, technology, arts and the humanities.

Task 1: Permanent Error

1. Explain that a photobook is a collection of photographs which tell a story with pictures. Look together at the photo book “Permanent Error” by Pieter Hugo. You can also look at the pictures online.
2. Ask the children what they think the pictures are showing. Explain to them that this is the story of Agbogbloshie, which was one of the biggest waste dumps in the world. It is home to 80,000 people. Every day, huge amounts of e-waste, mostly TVs and computers, was burned to extract valuable metals. This e-waste came from around the world, but mostly from Europe and the US.

Philosophical exercise

1. Compare and contrast garbage and waste and what to do about it.
2. Consider if the items can become (or produce) garbage and if they can become (or produce) waste, and what people can do about it.
3. For each item, think about whether it becomes garbage (everyday household trash), waste (a broader category that includes all types of discarded materials), or both. What can people do to reduce the amount of garbage or waste for each item?

Task 2: Creating a photobook with their thoughts about previous group discussions

1. Explain to the children that they will create their own photo book. They can plan and think about how their photobook should look-like, and kindergarten teachers write the thoughts the children have expressed and concluded from the previous discussions. Make sure to highlight that when one creates a photobook with sustainability in mind the way the materials to use are selected, and which photos are chosen are different than when sustainability is not a core concern. Use this in all activities you can to raise awareness of how focusing on sustainability makes a difference even when it is not specifically stated.
2. Choosing and Cutting Out Photos

   Photograph children. They can take different positions but it is best if the picture shows the full body. Print the pictures and provide each child with a printed photo of themselves. Assist the children in carefully cutting out their image using scissors.

3. Selecting Backgrounds

   Lay out old newspapers and magazines. Let the children choose backgrounds and images and cut them out.

4. Creating the photobooks

   Children paste the backgrounds and their own pictures and the important sentences from previous discussion on a paper and bind it together as a book, leaving an empty page for parents and family to give feedback.

Task 3: Real or imaginary?

Use the created photobooks to discuss that not all photographs are real. Have they really been in places that are shown? Or have they created an illusion? Discuss how photos can be changed or edited and why it’s important to understand that images might not always show the truth, and that there are ways to confirm information given in images. Refer specifically to environmental issues as to reinforce that concern with sustainability is at the centre of the activity.

Collaborative thinking: have the children look at the photos and chat about the following questions.

Task 4: Appearance and Being

1. Start by showing them the Müller-Lyer illusion and talk about the appearance of the lines.

   

2. Ask them how they can make sure the lines are different and how they can be sure of the difference. Once they have found out that the lines measure the same, suggest looking for explanations why that happens.

3. Once they have reached a conclusion of some kind, show the result of the reflection in an image like this one:

   

4. Then consider other possibilities of things that look like something but are other things and make cards with them. Make sure to include images of nature to be able to ask if it is possible to see, for instance, that the glaciers are disappearing. Have a philosophy session in which they try to work out what something looks like, what something is, and why there is a difference in appearance. Examples to be possibly explored: how things look under a microscope; how a straw in a glass of water can look like it is bent; how people can wear fake moustaches and wigs, how people can wear costumes in plays; make believe in the playground, how animals in the environment pretend to be something else (stick insect); etc.

Variations

• Use moving optical illusions: see moving eye illusions.
• Use old family photos: Ask children to get old photographs from their families to do the same.
• Imagine whether other animals can have optical illusions in a similar way, and think about whether they can identify them as humans do. See Animal visual illusion and confusion: the importance of a perceptual perspective (last accessed 11 October 2024).

Further Ideas

• Use the manipulation in a movie picture Have the children place different backgrounds in film format.
• Make a moving picture with stop motion explaining illusions Use stop motion application to explain their experience to other children.