What if you could change the smell, taste and feel of air?  What would you choose and why?

How would your life be different if you lived on a planet without air (oxygen)? What would you have to do so that you could breathe? How would your day change? What would life be like?

In the “City of Ember” the children come out of their underground home and take their first breath of fresh air. Can you imagine how they felt? What were they thinking? What words would you use to describe that moment in time?

Investigate how Earth’s air is changing.  What can we do to keep it unpolluted? 

Many people feel that air has a voice or a song.  What words or song can you hear in the air that circle us?  Why does the air sing that song?

Wind on the Hill by A. A. Milne

No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.

It’s flying from somewhere
As fast as it can,
I couldn’t keep up with it,
Not if I ran.

But if I stopped holding
The string of my kite,
It would blow with the wind
For a day and a night.

And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.

So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes…
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.

Books

Division 1

• Bear in the Air – Susan Meyer
• What Living Things Need Air – Vic Parker
• Air Is All Around You – Franklyn M. Branley
• Millicent & the Wind – Robert Munsch
• Using Air – Sharon Katz Cooper
• Feel the Wind – Arthur Dorros
• I Can Help Clean Our Air – Viv Smith

Division 2

• The Science of Air – Steve Parker
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – William Kamkwamba
• How Artists See the Elements – Colleen Carole
• Poems about Air – Andrew Peters
• Out of Thin Air – A Story of Big Trees – Nancy Mecham
• Polluted Air – Angela Royston
• View From the Air – Reeve Lindbergh

More Strategies

Click here for many strategies you can use in your classroom.