Words to Talk about and build on

I think it is best to start to build on words that a child can relate to in order to increase an understanding and passion for the environment and its many categories and issues.  We do not need to induce fear when learning because we can only live with the day at hand.  Our moment in time.

I have used the Internet search engines to find definitions of words that I think would be easy to talk about and build on.  You can increase your knowledge as you go along. 

I am giving credit to these websites who offered these definitions as part of my listing on my site contents and the green webcyclopedia page. I could not pull out each individual site for each individual word but I will refer to this page, the words to talk about , when showing you the link on the site content or the thegreenwebcyclopedia home page.

Air -  A tasteless, odorless and invisible mix of gases that is primarily made up of oxygen and nitrogen. There are layers of air that cover the earth, which is known as the atmosphere. 

Clouds -  A cloud is made up of millions of tiny water droplets or ice crystals floating together in the air.  

Dirt -  Also known as Soil.    Soil is made from lots of organic materials in layers, like a cake.

Earth -  Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only planet known to support life. 

Environment -  All the physical surroundings on Earth are called the environment. The environment includes everything living and everything nonliving.   It can be in your home, your school and outside world.  When it comes to children's behavior, the environment just means the little things around your child. 

Flowers - The part of the plant that is has different  shapes, sizes, colors, and scents.   A flower is the part of a plant that blossoms. Flowers produce the seeds that can become new plants. Most plants, including many trees, grow some kind of flower. 

Grass - A family of plants that have leaves that look like flat blades. Most of them are low and green but not all of them.

Heat -  make or become hot or warm.  Heat is a. form of energy. Heat flows from hot objects to cool objects. It flows from one object to another because of their difference in temperature. The cool object absorbs the energy and becomes warmer. 

Home -  the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household. 

Lake -  A lake is a body of water that is surrounded by land. There are millions of lakes in the world. They are found on every continent and in every kind of environment—in mountains and deserts, on plains, and near seashores. 

Light -  Light is a form of energy that moves in straight lines. It also reflects off things, and that reflected light enters our eyes, allowing us to see. 

Moon -  The Moon is a large natural object that orbits, or travels around, Earth.  It is the brightest object in the sky after the sun.

Ocean -  An ocean is a huge body of salt water. Oceans cover nearly 71 percent of Earth’s surface. They contain almost 98 percent of all the water on Earth.. 

Plant -  Plants are living things that grow from the soil and turn light from the Sun into food. The plants can be big giant trees or small, tiny patches of moss. With the help of a process called photosynthesis, plants produce their food. 

Rain -  Raindrops fall to Earth when clouds become saturated, or filled, with water droplets.   Rain is the liquid form of water that falls from the sky in drops. Rain fills lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams. It provides the fresh water needed by humans, animals, and plants. If too much rain falls, however, dangerous flooding may happen. 

River -  A river is a large, natural stream of flowing water. Rivers are found on every continent and on nearly every kind of land. 

Snow -  white frosted precipitation or ice crystallizations that when it falls from cumulus clouds in large amounts, it gathers like a white blanket on the ground. Snow is wet and white. 

Sun -  a hot ball of gases that gives off great amounts of energy. Life on Earth depends on light and heat from the Sun. The solar system also contains planets, comets, and asteroids. They all orbit, or travel around, the Sun. 

Trees -  A tree is a tall plant that can live a very long time. It has a single stem or trunk and branches that support leaves. Beneath the ground, a tree has a root system that acts as an anchor and stores the water and nutrients the plant needs to grow. 

Water -  Water is the liquid that makes life on Earth possible. All living things need water to survive. Without water, life as we know it would not exist. And life exists wherever there is water.  A molecule of water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. 

Animals -  Animals are living things. Like plants, animals need food and water to live. Unlike plants, which make their own food, animals feed themselves by eating plants or other animals. Animals can also sense what goes on around them. Their bodies allow them to move in reaction to their surroundings. 

Adaptation -  A change or the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment.    School adaptation could be considered as the process in which students learn how to act in a way suited to a new environment    Adaptations are special body parts or behaviors that help a living thing survive in an environment. There are two main types of adaptation: physical adaptations are special body parts that help a plant or animal survive in an environment, and behavioral adaptations are actions plants and animals take to survive. 

Climate -  Climate is the average weather conditions in a place over 30 years or more. 

Cloud Formations -  Clouds are the sky's way of moving water from one place to another.    Students will identify 6 types of clouds: cirrus, cumulus, altocumulus, cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, and stratus. 

Creatures -  You can refer to any living thing that is not a plant as a creature, especially when it is of an unknown or unfamiliar kind. 

Energy -  Energy is defined as the ability to do work.   Energy makes things move. It makes machines go. Energy also makes living things grow. Energy can be found in many things and can take different forms. For example, kinetic energy is the energy of motion, and potential energy is energy due to an object's position or structure. Energy is never lost, but it can be converted from one form to another. 

Gas -  Gases are one of the three states of matter. Like solids and liquids, they are everywhere. Common gases include oxygen and carbon dioxide – you can't see them because they're colorless, but they are there in the air we breathe. They're made up of very small molecules which are really spread out.  

Habitat -  A habitat is the home of an animal or a plant. Almost every place on Earth—from the hottest desert to the coldest ice pack—is a habitat for some kinds of animals and plants. Most habitats include a community of animals and plants along with water, oxygen, soil or sand, and rocks. 

Liquid -  Liquids are made up of very small particles which are packed close together, but not as tightly as solids. These molecules are not arranged in any specific pattern, so they can move around and slide past each other. That's how a liquid changes its shape.  Liquids can flow and take on the shape of the container in which they are placed.

Litter -  Littering is the act of throwing garbage or waste anywhere other than in trash cans.   Litter is stuff that ends up on the ground or in lakes and seas, and that shouldn't be there. It could be glass bottles, plastic bags, tins, cigarette butts or sweet wrappers. Both animals and people can injure themselves because of litter. Pertaining to animals it is the group of young animals born to an animal at one time. 

Matter - Anything on earth that has mass and takes up space is matter.   The mass of an object is the amount of material that makes up the object.  

Neighborhood -  A neighborhood is a place where some people live, some people work, and some people play. A neighborhood is a community. The people who live in a neighborhood are neighbors. They live next door to each other. They live across the hall and across the street from each other. 

Seasons -  A season is a period of the year that is distinguished by special climate conditions. The four seasons—spring, summer, fall, and winter—follow one another regularly. Each has its own light, temperature, and weather patterns that repeat yearly. 

Soil -  Soil is a mixture of minerals and organic material that covers much of Earth's surface.    It holds water in place for their roots. It contains nutrients, or food substances, needed for their growth. Soil also provides a home for many animals and other living things.  

Solid -  Solids have a fixed shape and fixed volume, which means they don't move to fill a container when they're placed in it. They hold their own shape and volume. Solids cannot be compressed into a smaller space very easily. There's not much space between the atoms.  

Vegetation -  Vegetation means the plant life of a region or the plant community. It means all ground cover by plants, and is the main element of the biosphere. 

Weather -  Weather is a specific event—like a rainstorm or hot day—that happens over a few hours, days or weeks. 

Atmosphere -  The atmosphere is a mixture of gases that surrounds the Earth. It helps make life possible by providing us with air to breathe, shielding us from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation coming from the Sun, trapping heat to warm the planet, and preventing extreme temperature differences between day and night. 

Biomes -  A biome is an area classified according to the species that live in that location. Temperature range, soil type, and the amount of light and water are unique to a particular place and form the niches for specific species allowing scientists to define the biome. 

Conservation -  Conservation is the protection of things found in nature. It requires the sensible use of all Earth's natural resources: water, soil, minerals, wildlife, and forests. People who care about conservation try to preserve natural resources so they will still be around in the future. 

Ecosystem -  An ecosystem is made up of all of the living and nonliving things in an area. This includes all of the plants, animals, and other living things that make up the communities of life in an area. An ecosystem also includes nonliving materials—for example, water, rocks, soil, and sand. A swamp, a prairie, an ocean, and a forest are examples of ecosystems. 

Elements -   Elements are solids, liquid, and gases that cannot be broken down into anything else. 

Farm -  A farm is a piece of land used to grow crops and/or raise animals for produce.  People who grow this produce are called “farmers”, and their work is called “farming”.  Farms come in all shapes and sizes, with some being very large and others very small.

Instincts -  Instinct is defined as an unlearned behavior that it is inborn, developed through evolution, and shared by all the members of a species. 

Landscapes -  A landscape is part of Earth's surface that can be viewed at one time from one place. It consists of the geographic features that mark, or are characteristic of, a particular area. The term comes from the Dutch word landschap, the name given to paintings of the countryside. 

Minerals -  Minerals are essential to the life of plants and animals. Most plants get minerals from the soil. Animals, including humans, obtain mineral nutrients from plants, vegetables, and fruits or from the milk, eggs, and meat of plant-eating animals. Industry is equally dependent upon an abundant supply of minerals.  A mineral is defined as a naturally occurring solid that has a definite chemical composition and an ordered, usually crystalline, atomic structure. Minerals form through inorganic, or nonliving, processes. The elements in a mineral may be metallic or nonmetallic. There are several thousand known types of minerals; approximately 100 of these make up the main mineral components of rocks.

Nutrients -  Nutrients are important substances you get from food that help your body survive and grow. Nutrients include carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. Proteins help build your body as it grows, while carbohydrates and fats are mainly used for energy. Vitamins and minerals help you stay healthy. 

Organic Matter -  Organic matter (or organic material) is matter that has come from a recently living organism. It is capable of decay, or is the product of decay; or is composed of organic compounds.  

Oxygen -  Oxygen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas essential to living organisms, being taken up by animals, which convert it to carbon dioxide.   Oxygen is a chemical element with an atomic number of 8.

Planets -  A planet must do three things: it must orbit a star, it must be big enough to have enough gravity to force a spherical shape, and it must be big enough that its gravity cleared away any objects of a similar size near its orbit. 

Pollution -  Pollution happens when the environment is contaminated, or dirtied, by waste, chemicals, and other harmful substances. There are three main forms of pollution: air, water, and land. 

Recycle -  Recycling is the process of taking materials ready to be thrown away and converting (changing) them into reusable materials. This is important to reducing trash 

Solar System -  The solar system consists of the Sun and everything that orbits, or travels around, the Sun. This includes the eight planets and their moons, dwarf planets, and countless asteroids, comets, and other small, icy objects. However, even with all these things, most of the solar system is empty space. 

Sustainability -  Sustainability has become a mainstream topic in the 21st century, and its application to our daily lives takes many forms. One sustainability definition for kids says sustainability refers to using resources in such a way that they will continue to be available in the future. 

Temperature -  Temperature is a measure of the degree of hotness or coldness of an object. It is actually a measure of the average kinetic energy or speed of the molecules in a substance (air). The more kinetic energy (speed) the molecules have, the higher their temperature and vice versa. 

Waste -  Waste is defined as unwanted and unusable materials and is regarded as a substance which is of no use. Waste that we see in our surroundings is also known as garbage. 

Zoo -  A zoo is a place where animals live in captivity and are put on display for people to view. The word “zoo” is short for “zoological park." Zoos benefit conservation not only through direct efforts such as captive breeding, wild survival training and reintroduction, but also in indirect ways.