Earth Awareness Program Content

Earth Balloon®

Earth Awareness Program Highlights: The Earth Awareness program is a positive learning experience designed to be interactive, with hands on activities and student/teacher interaction. The following is intended as a basic guideline, program content may vary somewhat, depending on the facilitator and the hosting school's requirements.

Program length is dependant upon the grade level and the number of classes participating per day. Typically, the first half of the program session is used with the class outside the globe discussing the physical earth and scale of the Earth Balloon. The second half of the program session the students enter the Earth Balloon to learn about the inside of the earth, as well as learning about time zones, pollution, the environment, and more.

Grades K-2: (15-30 minute session)

Basic geography 101: Discussion on what the physical earth looks like. (landforms, bodies of water, etc.)
"Walking Tour" around the earth.
The Earth Balloon is like looking at the earth from outer space. The colors show different types of land, mountains, deserts, forests, oceans, rivers, lakes, etc.
Eco-systems and environments (different animals live in different places. What kind of animals would you find in the Amazon?, Australia? Where we live?).
What about people? Where do we find them?
Land vs. water.
What is a rain forest?

Grades 3,4,5: (20-45 minute session)

The basics along with the introduction of scale. Earth Balloon scale: 1" on the Earth Balloon equals 30 miles on the real earth.
How do the sun and moon and other planets compare in size to our Earth Balloon? At this scale how far away would they be?
View the Earth Like the astronauts in the space shuttle.
Time and seasons, time zones.
The changing earth.
North and South Poles. How are they different?

Grades 6-8: (25-50 minute session)

The above information, plus: Additional scale information (students take measurements to determine distance on the real earth).
Plate Tectonics (fractured earth, ring of fire, volcanic islands, super continents).
What is inside the earth? (inner core, outer core, mantle & crust)
People: Do all people live like we do in the US? How are people in various parts of the earth different from one another? How are people from various parts of the earth similar to one another?
Physical vs. political.
Man's impact on the earth (Aral Sea, Haiti, Madagascar)
Bermuda Triangle, Voyage of the Titanic.
Driest place on the earth (rain shadow effect).

Program length may vary, depending on the number of classes and the length of our visit. Program length can be as short as 15 minutes and as long as one hour per class. The Earth Balloon program works with groups of 20-30 students per session. Exclusive use of an indoor area (gym) with a 17 foot high ceiling is required for the Earth Awareness program.

The Earth Awareness program includes grade level appropriate pre-program curriculum with worksheets, data sheets, puzzles, parent information handout and more.