Welcome to Earthkeepers
Prop Photos and Descriptions for The Institute for Earth Education’s Earthkeeperstm Program
Earthkeepers is a magical learning adventure designed to help young people live more joyously and harmoniously with the natural world. To support the sense of magic and adventure as well as bring abstract concepts into the concrete, props and materials are critically important. We realize that simply reading descriptions of these in the Earthkeepers book or in the Conceptual Encounter activity descriptions may not be sufficient to those who have not seen these props and materials firsthand.
The purpose of this web site is to provide photos and descriptions of the props and materials that should be most useful to those who are setting up the program. In addition, we think they could be helpful to those who are already offering the program.
Initially, most of these photos are from the Cooper Center for Environmental Learning at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA. That is primarily because that is where those of us who created this site are based, so it was easy for us to get the photos we need. However, we have included some from other sites and would like to include more. If you have photos of props or materials that you would like to share, please send them to me at my email address below. Remember that we are looking for photos and of props and materials, not general photos of activities in progress.
Remember that not all props and materials need to be identical. The photos here show one way of creating them. The descriptions accompanying the photos often explain the key aspects of the props and materials to keep in mind. We hope those are useful to you are you create your own.
A good example of this is E.M.’s Lab. I have had the pleasure of visiting more than 30 different E.M.’s Labs around the world, including in a yurt, tent, mud brick building, wagon on wheels, historic cabin, and a wide range of other situations. There are endless possibilities. On this site you will even see photos an E.M.’s Lab in Japan, where a television production crew recreated the lab illustration from the Earthkeepers book! We would like to feature more variations on E.M.’s Lab, so send your photos and descriptions to us.
I want to thank Ariane Mohr-Felsen, who gathered the photos and created this site. Thank you, Ariane, for the great work you put into this!
For Earth,
Bruce Johnson
International Program Coordinator
The Institute for Earth Education
Earthkeepers is a trademark of The Institute for Earth Education, Greenville, WV 24945 USA.