Our Youth Engagement group have been busy! Last year, we completed our main project which was to produce a Climate Activity Pack for Children, Families and Schools. Our pack has now been printed and we have already begun to distribute it to families and children who visit our MCA stall in Leek Market Place. Our MCA Climate Activity Pack is Free and available at all our MCA events this year including the Energy Fair on April 3rd at the Foxlowe.
For this year, our Youth Engagement Team is focussing on a major project which aims to introduce ‘Moorlands Wild Week’ to schools. The idea for this project, was first successfully developed in Buxton by Jackie Wragg, Youth Engagement Officer for South West Peak Landscape Partnership. To find out more about our Climate Activity Pack and how you can get involved in our exiting Moorlands Wild Week project read on!.....
We cannot ignore Climate change any longer – its effects are happening now, both locally and more dramatically, throughout the world. It will affect us all, especially our children and their future. Even younger children need to have an explanation about climate change, in a way that is appropriate, and to explore ways that we and they can help. Climate change is a worrying subject, especially for the young, so we need to introduce it with care. To help with this, one of our young members at Moorlands Climate Action (MCA) suggested that we produce a pack for schools.
In response, our MCA Youth Team devised a practical Climate Activity Pack for young primary age children, full of fun activities and facts to explain a little of what climate change is about and to suggest simple helpful ideas they can try. Our pack includes Nature activity cards, showing how to encourage pollinating insects, birds and bugs, as well as science based cards with fun experiments to try around air and oil pollution, plus a colourful ‘Climate Bingo’ game to play. Included in the pack is a glossary sheet to explain in simple language the terms used. Children can even invent and draw a Climate change ‘Super Hero’!
The MCA Climate Activity packs are free of charge and given to children and families. Local primary schools can also benefit, if they wish, with a Climate Activity Pack for use in their classrooms. Families who would like one for their own children can contact us at
Climate Activity Packs and Moorlands Wild Week project - Why have we done this?
There is often confusion around Climate change – from the terminology used to what can be done to alleviate its life changing effects. In 2019 Italy made climate change lessons compulsory for all children while in the U.K, there has been no coordinated Climate Education strategy by Government or a standard full Climate Education curriculum, either to explain and educate children about Climate Change or what can be done to help. Yet, it is our children who will have to live through it.
Education about Climate change as part of the curriculum, has been asked for by young people and teachers alike for a number of years. Industry, energy businesses and charities are just some who have produced climate educational material, many excellent, others much less so. It has therefore been left to busy teachers, parents and children to trawl through what is available without any official guidance as to quality or accuracy of information.
In the UK The youth led organisation 1) Teach the Future (TTF) say that current climate education is inadequate to prepare students to face the effects of climate change, or taught to understand the solutions. (TTF) explain that 68% of students want to learn more about the environment, their current research showing that 70% of teachers do not feel they have received adequate training to educate their students about climate change. (TTF) have lobbied the Government to provide training for teachers plus a broad based climate change curriculum.
In 2021 (TTF) handed their ‘Climate Change Bill’ to MP Nadia Whittome who presented it to the House of Commons – This Bill has reached its second reading stage, scheduled to take place on Friday 18th March. (2) In Nadia Whittome’s introduction to the Bill she explained “This Bill exists only because of the hard work of young people. School students from Teach the Future who…….have spent the past two years campaigning relentlessly to be taught the truth about the climate crisis and to be equipped with the skills to tackle it”
In addition to the (TTF) Bill, (3) The Sustainability and Climate Change Draft strategy for the education and children’s services systems is also going through Parliament. With luck, if they are passed, both of these interventions could lead to changes that will benefit children and young people in their education and future lives.