Building a city

Today’s learning was about designing and building a city that included all the essentials, while still keeping environmental impact to a minimum. We talked about the fact that we impact on the environment just by existing… that we can’t make others live more simply or in a less impacting way, but we can design a city in a way that could minimise the ease-of-use or availability of the more destructive practices. We talked about pre-plastic days, and reusing and recycling as a matter of course, about living without supermarkets within easy reach… about seed saving and heirloom varieties, crop rotation and leaving the land fallow… one thing led to another, and each thought brought up a new question. It’s been a (mostly!) fun day.

Along the way, we watched some clips –
This one talks about conflict minerals, leading us to talk about the source of the things we buy and use..

This one was fascinating to the boys – connecting to the internet through lightbulbs!

We looked at some of my previous posts… the woodland house, and changing education paradigms – another go at getting that divergent thinking working! We talked quite a lot today, and will have a lot more to think about…

… and – just because I can (and because it made us laugh!) – here are some cuddly carrots…