Websites for Kids
Getting children excited about energy efficiency may seem hard—for some parents, it’s enough of a challenge to get them to do chores!
Touchstone Energy® Cooperatives, the brand “ID” of the nation’s not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, offers Touchstone Energy Kids Zone. The site is designed to teach children in kindergarten through fifth grade how to be Super Energy Savers in their homes. The Kids Zone also includes interactive games, videos, and surprises.
This website allows parents to interact with children so the family can focus on energy efficiency together. Through fun activities, students and their parents learn about renewable energy, electrical safety, and energy savings.
For example, LIGHTS OUT!, an online energy saving game in the Kids Zone, challenges kids to speed through a virtual house, replacing traditional incandescent lightbulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) and turning off lights and appliances as fast as possible. The less energy a player uses by the time everything’s off, the better their score!
ENERGY STAR’s website for youth, www.energystar.gov/kids, provides interactive ways to learn how to make small changes with a big impact in places like a child’s bedroom. The site gives guidance on what items use power even when they’re not on (cell phone chargers, certain TVs, etc.) and basic things like air leaks that kids can look for and help their parents fix.
Teachers searching for ways to help students focus on energy efficiency have several resources available. Access Energy provided schools in our service area with CFL Charlie Super Energy Saver kits.
In addition to classroom activities, each kit includes a checklist that children can use to help guide their parents on an energy efficiency expedition. In the exercise, kids walk through the house with their parents to make sure the refrigerator door is closed, and discuss switching out incandescent bulbs with CFLs, turning off all lights after leaving a room, and shutting off computers when not in use.
Finished checklists signed by children and parents are submitted to teachers for a certificate declaring the student “an official Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Super Energy Saver.” Certificates carry the image and signature of CFL Charlie.
EERE also offers lesson plans, science projects, and more for K-12 students at www.eere.energy.gov/education. For example, elementary and middle school students can make a ‘Draft-O-Meter’ from a pencil and plastic wrap to check for air leaks in their home. High school science and math students can use the lesson plan, ‘Watt Does it Cost to Use it?’ to learn the energy “price tag” for different electric household items.
No matter what website you point kids to, the message remains clear. Energy efficiency starts at home, and everyone in the family has an important role to play!
Source: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Touchstone Energy® Cooperatives, ENERGY STAR, Alliance to Save Energy