School Children of SDN Tunjungsekar 1 Malang Observe the Sun
Saturday, 5th May 2012; the third grade students of an elementary school called Sekolah Dasar Negeri (SDN) Tunjungsekar 1 Malang; visited ProFauna's education center or Petungsewu Wildlife Education Center (P-WEC). There were 78 children of 8 to 9 years old learning about nature conservation in the center and having fun at the same time. The fresh air and natural environment that center offered made the children excited to follow the activities.
For the first session, the children were led by P-WEC educators in tree-watching game. In this activity, students learned about types of trees in the center by observing the different kinds of stems, barks, and leaves. Furthermore, the educators taught them the ecological functions and advantages of trees to humans.
Another activity was wildlife watching. The students were taken to watch the wildlife in the surrounding of the center like birds, butterflies, and squirrels. As most students were citizens who rarely saw those wildlife in their neighborhood, they were excited to see the jumping squirrels looking for food. Many of them saw a squirrel for the first time in their life.
After tree-and-wildlife watching, the students followed the educators to observe the sun. Using a solarschope, students could observe the sun and learn about the sunspot. They learned how the phenomena happened and found out if the sunspot was larger than the earth.
By having this activity, students learned if the earth was a small planet in the universe. Knowing that, P-WEC educators told the message of the activity that the earth was only one 1.3 millionth of the sun. Imagining the smallness, students were expected to understand that humans live in a limited planet thus they needed to protect it by preventing pollution and other activities destroying the earth.
In the last session, students of the environmentally friendly school or Sekolah Adiwiyata joined outbound games presented by P-WEC facilitators. The flying fox was the game the students looked forward. Some students were afraid for the first time to fly. However, most of them really enjoyed it then. Overall, they loved being at P-WEC to have outdoor learning about the nature including the sun observation while having fun.