population education, or, 'sharing is caring'

Not a bad lesson plan except my population of kids are pretty aware already of the etiquette of sharing resources - highlighted early on in the class! (Good parenting tho' folks!)  So what did I do? Well, first a rapid Q&A about my classroom globe. Encouraged discussion about planets in general, exactly where we live on the model (New York) and then, where CAN'T we live, or anyone for that matter. Checked ocean, poles (OK I know about Inuits but in the interests of time I didn't mention them), mountains, a lot of the desert areas, impenetrable jungle etc. A big planet can have too many people for the available resources - air, water, food, and to maintain a 'personal space'. How to demo this?

Using a small rug as an 'island', the kids pretended to move onto it and live, one at a time, until things got way too crowded and uncomfortable:

OK so let's see about the resource allocation now! A plate of cookies (2 per child but they weren't told this) were the total food grown on our 'island' for the year. When passed around, I wanted the first few children to take a handful, but to their credit they glanced around the table and made a mental tally of what they OUGHT to take to be fair. Impressive, but I had to drop large hints to get them to take more! Of course, the plate was empty for the last kid or so and they understood the value of equal sharing and that even the kids who got cookies didn't all get the same either. Re-passing the cookies I asked, "How many should you take to be sure it's fair" and some kids said 'one' which I also thought was pretty good reasoning. Now we all had the same BUT, as I pointed out, fewer kids in the class would mean more for everyone. 2 cookies each was fair but maybe not enough to satisfy.

I did the same with a pitcher of water. They were getting the message!
Now for some urban planning:

The kids pretended to 'peel' the surface off the globe and we divided the 'skin' - a paper circle - into a pie showing the places people could live and those where they couldn't. We colored in some 'slices': blue = sea; brown = unliveable land; dots = liveable land and green = farmland. Pretty clear there's not much farmland. Each child got a lego block 'house' to put on the dotted slice and  soon things were getting crowded, houses were spilling over into the farmland and thus reducing the food supply as the population increased.
"What can we do to keep our living area, but free up some space around the houses for gardens, parks, playgrounds etc?" I asked the kids. I got a lot of suggestions but maybe one child in half of the classes, 3's and 4's included here (that's about 1 in 15) actually told me to "build up". "make a tower" "put one on top", and my favorite, "make a castle". Solving a puzzle like that really involves some abstract thought and I was really impressed to find, at such a young age, that some kids could do this. Wow!!!

Here they are building an apartment!

This works just as well with a small circle representing 'our town'. They can really imagine losing their garden and playground better that way.

Voila!

Whether or not the idea of a global population explosion was processed here, the classroom  and 'my town' scale seemed to give them pause, even though they won't get to experience privations of space and food in their everyday lives. I will try to get some pictures and videos of overcrowding in other places  and countries without making a bleak picture for them. That's for next time as we segue into rocks and minerals!