Karen Player, Author at Australian Environmental Education

July 27, 2021July 27, 2021

Online Science Classes

Get ready for National Science Week with a range of online earth and environmental science programs. These programs are suitable for students in the classroom or learning from home. It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher or parent there is a program perfect for you.

Class Programs

My Journey Beneath the Waves

My Journey Beneath the Waves: Diving Sydney’s Rocky Reefs takes you and your students on an exploration of the marine environment. The temperate waters around Sydney are home to a variety of habitats including kelp beds and sponge gardens. These are wonderful place to dive and discover the diversity of animals that live there.

Tuesday 10 August at 10am & 2pm

What’s in your Backyard

What’s in your Backyard: discover some of the amazing animals that live in your backyard. Explores the diversity of animals that lives in your local area by looking for the clues that are left behind. Students will look at local animals and find out what they can do to protect them.

Composite images of a cockatoo, frog and spider web

Wednesday 11 August at 10am & 2pm

Stories in the Stone

Take a journey back in time to the beginning of the Earth 4.6 Billion Years ago. We will explore the changes to the earth over that time and the evolution of life. This journey focuses on the diversity of Australian animals that are found nowhere else in the world.

Thursday 12 August at 10am & 2pm

Outschool

Outschool is an innovative education platform that offers a variety of engaging, small-group classes online. Unlike traditional classes, Outschool classes give kids the unique opportunity to explore their interests in-depth via interactive, live video by experienced, independent educators.

Marvellous Marine Life

Explore the amazing diversity of animals with the Marvellous Marine Life workshop. Take a journey beneath the waves to explore this wonderful world. Learn about some of these incredible animals, their adaptions and habitats.

Tuesday 10 August at 11am & 3pm

Invertebrate Investigations

Invertebrate Investigations explores the diverse world of invertebrates. Discover why invertebrates are important and learn how investigate the invertebrates in your own backyard.

Composite image of different invertebrates; cicada, golden orb weaving spider and oleander butterfly

Wednesday 11 August at 11am & 3pm

Ancient Australian Animals

Take a journey through time to discover some of Australia’s ancient animals. Become a Palaeontologist and look at real fossils to find out about the animals that called Australia home.

Thylacaleo skeleton from Naracoorte Caves SA

Thursday 12 August at 11am & 3pm

It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher or parent there is a program perfect for you.

July 21, 2021July 22, 2021

SciFest 2021

SciFest 2021 is on again between 2 – 27 August. SciFest aligns with National Science week in August and is a virtual excursions festival promoting science and technology. Join Karen from Australian Environmental Education as she shares her love science.

FREE events

Backyard Biodiversity

Join Karen to talk about Backyard Biodiversity. Discover some of the amazing animals living in your local area. Students will look at local animals and find out what they can do to protect them.

Tuesday 17 August at 2pm & Thursday 19 August at 4pm

See all Australian Environmental Education sessions for SciFest 2021

July 19, 2021July 20, 2021

Education Week 2021

Australian Environmental Education has a range of programs to celebrate Education Week between 26 – 30 July. Come on a journey with Karen exploring this years theme of Lifelong Learning.

I have always grown up with a sense of wonder about nature and our place within it. I strive to discover, explore and learn everyday.

Virtual Excursions

Join Karen from Australian Environmental Education while she shares for lifelong learning journey. During the live and interactive virtual excursions Karen will share some SCUBA diving stories, explore what’s living in our backyards and show you specimens from her rock and fossil collection.

My Journey Beneath the Waves

Monday 26 July at 2pm & Tuesday 27 July at 10am

What’s in your Backyard

What’s in your Backyard: discover some of the amazing animals that live in your backyard this World Environment Day. Explores the diversity of animals that lives in your local area by looking for the clues that are left behind. Students will look at local animals and find out what they can do to protect them.

Tuesday 27 July at 2pm & Wednesday 28 at 10am

Stories in the Stone

Wednesday 28 at 2pm & Thursday 29 at 10am

BOOK an EDUCATION WEEK virtual excursion

Online Learning resources

Australian Environmental Education has online learning resources to help you teach a range of earth and environmental science concepts. These resources include web pages, printable activities, videos and outside learning activities.

Be a lifelong learner with these resources

July 9, 2021July 14, 2021

Online Learning Resources

Focus on Frogs

Australia is home to about 240 species of native Amphibians, all of which are frogs. In urban areas, human development has reduced the natural habitat available to frogs. The Focus on Frogs workshop provides information and skills that will enable you and your child to discover what frogs live in your backyard or local area.

Focus on Frogs resources

Minbeasts in your Garden

Minibeasts in your Garden explores the diverse world of minibeasts. Discover why minibeasts are important and learn how find them in your garden or local park. The program will help you to identify common groups of backyard minibeasts and provides information and skills to conduct your own minibeasts investigation.

Minibeasts in your Garden resources

The Story of a River

Follow the journey of water down the river through the catchment to the sea. Water is essential for all forms of life and the small amount of available freshwater create competing pressures for our water resources. Different land uses in a catchment have different impacts out our precious water resources. Discover the impacts of land clearing, agriculture and urbanisation on our waterways.

The Story of a River resources

Online Learning Resources

Rocks and Fossils are fascinating to kids and adults alike. The resources looks at plate tectonics, inside the earth, weathering, soils, fossils and Australian dinosaurs and megafauna. This information will help you teach these topics to your students.

Rocks and Fossils resources

Water is essential for all life and is the most abundant substance on Earth. Water covers 75% of the earth’s surface, however only a very small amount is fresh water that can be used directly by people, animals and plants

Water resources

Activities

I have created a set of fun and activities to supplement the educational resources section on this website.

Virtual Excursions

Australian Environmental Education can run a Virtual Excursion linked to these resources. We can deliver all our onsite incursions as Virtual Excursions as a class learning from home or at school.

Request a Virtual Excursion

June 26, 2021June 26, 2021

The Land of the Megafauna

Megafauna are large animal that roamed to world over 100,000 years ago. In Australia we have fossil evidence of these fascinating animals and one of the places where you can find these fossils is Wellington Caves in central west NSW.

The caves at Wellington are located in an outcrop of Early Devonian limestone, which is about 400 million years old. That limestone is part of the Garra Formation. Caves are great places to find fossils

Fossil vertebrates have been collected since 1830 from Wellington Caves. The list of includes 58 species; 30 species that are extinct throughout Australia and 12 species that are no longer found in Wellington region. The fossil deposits also contains bones from reptiles, birds, bats, rodents and monotremes. The age range of the fossils is from the late Pliocene to late Pleistocene approximately 3.5 million – 40,000 years ago. Evidence indicates that the fossils were deposited in the caves over three distinct periods.

Megafauna

The massive Diprotodon optatum was the largest marsupial known and the first fossil mammal named in Australia by Richard Owen 1838. Diprotodon is one of the most well known of the Australian megafauna and it was widespread across Australia becoming extinct about 25,000 years ago.

Thylacoleo carnifex, the Marsupial Lion is the largest carnivorous Australian mammal known. It may have hunted other Pleistocene megafauna like the giant Diprotodon.

Megalania prisca is the largest terrestrial lizard known to have existed and was named by Richard Owen in 1859. Megalania was up to 5 metres long and would have been a top predator eating large mammals, other reptiles and birds.

Wonambi naracoortensis is a five to six metre long snake and was an ambush predator.

At the end of the last ice age the climate in Australia changed to warm-dry. This resulted in surface water drying up and becoming scarce. Most inland lakes became completely dry or dry in the warmer seasons. This saw the end of the age of the Megafauna and many species became extinct.

Some large grazing animals like Diprotodon moved to eastern Australia where there still was permanent water and better vegetation. Ultimately these animals also became extinct.

Come and visit Wellington Caves to see some great replicas and models of these amazing animals.

June 21, 2021June 26, 2021

Minibeasts in the Classroom

Live minibeasts make a great addition to any classroom or home and are easy to maintain. This is a great way to bring nature into the classroom. You can use these animals to teach about adaptations, life cycles and habitats.

I recently went to a Sydney childcare centre to update their stick insect enclosure. It was a wonderful centre that had a focus on nature play. They had adapted an old reptile tank for their stick insects and wanted to have a variety of species to enrich the experience for the students. We looked at the size of the tank to determine what combination of species would suit.

I had an audience of 4 year olds while I was cleaning the tank and getting ready to put the in new animals. I then presented 2 short sessions for the kids on minibeasts and they help me add the animals into their new home.

These are some species that are fun and easy to look after.

Spiny Leaf Insects
Children’s Stick Insects
Goliath Stick Insects
Crown Stick Insects
Australia Leaf Insects
Giant Burrowing Cockroaches
Garden Snails
Silk Worms

Some species will happily live in the same enclosure given the correct conditions. Make sure you always keep predators like praying mantis and spiders in separate enclosures.

If you are in Sydney let me know if you are interested in setting up Minibeast in the classroom.

June 1, 2021June 11, 2023

World Oceans Day

The more we learn about oceans and the marine environment, the more we can do to understand these link and protect the incredible diversity of species and habitats.

Education Resources

Oceans contain the greatest diversity of life on Earth. Habitats range from the freezing polar regions to the warm waters of the coral reefs, deep sea hydrothermal vents to shallow seagrass beds and beautiful sponge gardens to giant kelp forests, marine organisms are found everywhere.

Diving Stories

Marine resources

Infographic on microplastics in the oceans

Caring for our Oceans

Australia is home to the over 10,000 beaches and no part of Australia is more than 1,000km from the ocean. Our coasts are impacted by our actions on land. Rubbish and microplastics can be found washed up on almost every Australian beach.

dead turtle entangled in fishing nets on the oceans — Copyright: Maxim Blinkov

Plastic and rubbish washed up on the shore from oceans — Copyright: Maxim Blinkov

Pollution and rubbish get washed into our rivers and waterways with stormwater runoff and end up on our coasts and oceans. Over 75% of this rubbish is plastic. Plastics in the environment can take hundreds of years to break down, thereby impacting marine species for generations.

I created the Caring for our Oceans activities for the Landcare Learning Centre. These are great activities to do with your students.

Beach Survey

Beach Clean up

Remember everything we do on land has impacts on the marine environment. Follow the journey of water down the river through the catchment to the sea with the Story of a River.

May 5, 2021May 10, 2021

World Environment Day 2021

It is time to celebrate our marine and terrestrial environments with World Environment Day on June 5 and World Environment Day on June 8. The World Environment Day theme for 2021 is Ecosystem Restoration. The World Oceans Day theme for 2021 is Ocean: Life and Livelihoods.

Virtual Excursions

World Environment Day: Friday 4 June at 10am and 2pm

World Oceans Day: Tuesday 8 June at 10am and 2pm

BOOK NOW

Free Education resources

Help restore your local ecosystem this World Environment day with these great activities. Creating a Wildlife Habitat is a 5 part program that can help you plan and plant a wildlife habitat at your school, home or local area.

Focus on Frogs

In urban areas, human development has reduced the natural habitat available to frogs. The Focus on Frogs workshop provides information and skills that will enable you to discover what frogs live in your backyard or local area.

Minibeasts in your Garden

Noises in the Night

You don’t see many of the animals that live in your local area because they are nocturnal. Often it is the Noises in the Night that give us a clue to the nocturnal species that are living in our local area.

Marine Environments

The Marine Environments is divided up into three main ecosystems; Oceans, Coral Reefs and Estuaries. Our oceans make up 71% of the earth’s surface and they contain the greatest diversity of life on Earth.

The Deep Sea

The deep sea starts where the sunlight starts to fade, around 200m below the surface of the ocean. A twilight zone extends down to 1,000m, after which almost no light penetrates.

April 8, 2021April 29, 2021

Get your garden growing

Autumn is a great time to start planting your garden. The soil is still warm enough to encourage root growth and weather is mild reducing water stress. Young plants have a better chance to settle in and become established before summer heat arrives. I’ve been working on the garden below for a while and took the opportunity during the cooler weather to add new plants, mulch and do some landscaping.

I helped write some programs on Creating a Wildlife Habitat for the Junior Landcare Learning Centre. This 5 part program can help you plan and plant a wildlife habitat at your school, home or local area.

Creating a native wildlife habitat is a great way to ensure the protection of native wildlife, from the smallest insects to birds, reptiles, mammals and frogs.

Projects and Grants

NSW Schools are now invited to apply for a grant of up to $600 to purchase native trees and shrubs. The Tree Levy is an annual grants scheme funded by Federation to offset the environmental impact of the union’s activities.

Apply Now

If you are in Sydney you can register for the Cooling the Schools project through Greening Australia.

Cooling the Schools: Creating cooler and greener schools where children and nature thrive

We are working with students to add thousands of plants to community spaces and schools across Greater Sydney.

Incorporate existing features into your wildlife habitat design, including established trees, rainwater tanks and ponds. Make sustainable choices by using what you’ve already got.

Don’t forget to include plenty of spaces for animals to hide.

Attracting wildlife to you backyard

Attracting birds to your backyard

Attract birds to your backyard by creating a garden that will provide food, shelter and nesting materials and sites. Local flowering plants and fruit trees provide birds with nectar and seeds. To provide birds with some protein rich food, use mulch to encourage worms, insects and grubs to thrive. Plant dense prickly native shrubs for shelter, hang up nesting boxes and install a bird bath.

Create a frogs friendly backyard

Encourage frogs to come to live and breed in your backyard. Create a small shallow pond in an area that is partly shaded. Include thick ground hugging plants around part of the pond to provide areas of warmer and cooler water. Your pond will need some sunlight to encourage algae and other plants that provide food for tadpoles. Make sure the banks slope gently so that the frogs can get out. Add some rocks and logs to provide shelter for adult frogs.

Minibeasts in your backyard

Not all bugs are pests. Good bugs pollinate plants, break down dead flora and fauna, aerate the soil and provide for other wildlife. They can even help keep harmful pests away. Create an inviting environment for good bugs by planting plenty of native plants, wildflowers and herbs and use chemical-free pest control when the pests do creep in.

March 21, 2021April 7, 2024

Where does the rain go?

If you are on the east coast of Australia at the moment you have probably noticed that there has been a lot of rain. The high volume of rain is inundated catchments across the New South Wales resulting in repeated major flooding.

Multiple heavy rain events lead to super saturated soils and result in swollen river systems. There isn’t enough time for the water to flow away before more rain arrives. The ground is already saturated and can’t absorb more water resulting in increased runoff.

In many cities and towns this is made worse by hard surfaces; like roads, gutters, pathways and concrete drains. These hard surfaces make efficient channels directing the water into already flooded systems.

Typical Catchment

Catchments have water flowing into creeks and rivers and eventually to the sea. Floods in coastal systems are also impacted by the tides. A flood peak coinciding with the high tide will have greater impacts on low lying areas.

What is a Catchment? — Drainage basins illustration: spring, tributary, main river channel and ocean. *Copyright :* normaals

Why floods are so deep and dangerous in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley. Learn how the ‘bathtub effect’ makes this valley have one of the greatest flood risks in Australia.

The extent and depth of flooding is influenced by the unique ‘Bathtub Effect’ of the floodplain causing floodwater to back-up. The ‘Bathtub Effect’ enables dangerous, damaging flooding of significant depth to occur.

Most river valleys tend to widen as they approach the sea. The opposite is the case in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley. The river narrow downstream at sandstone gorges between Sackville and Brooklyn create natural choke points. Floodwaters back up and rise rapidly, causing deep and widespread flooding across the floodplain. Much like a bathtub with five taps turned on, but only one plug hole to let the water out.

Remember to stay safe

Flood Safety inforgraphic — Stay safe in a flood