Some great activities, videos and lessons kids can do at home

Parenting isn’t easy, even on a good day. Parenting during a pandemic only adds to the challenges.

This past week many kids returned to “school,” most of them conducting lessons over computers and tablets with teachers doing their best to keep students engaged. With many parents working from home these days too, school from home has a variety of pitfalls.

Snohomish County PUD employs two Public Education Program Coordinators to help local students learn about renewable energy, conservation, safety around electricity and more. Every year, the PUD holds assembly performances and PUD contract teachers spend thousands of hours in local classrooms exploring the aforementioned subjects.

Since the pandemic began, though, those lessons have been altered. The PUD’s education coordinators Jenni Lamarca and Heather Herbst are reworking their program offerings to continue to serve teachers in the community like the PUD has been doing for 30-plus years. The PUD has invested in developing a wide variety of free educational resources that parents can use at home to teach their kids about energy, conservation and safety.

Here’s a list of great activities, videos and lessons kids can do at home. To access the materials, videos and lessons below, visit the Education page on snopud.com and click on Energy Education Activities:

Take a virtual field trip of a small hydroelectric project (grades 4 and up): Have you ever wondered how electricity is generated locally in our county? There are a lot of steps in the process before it reaches the electrical outlets in your home.

Look at live graphs of solar production data (grades 4 and up): The summer may be winding down, but the sun is still shining. The solar panels at the PUD’s Community Solar project in Arlington are working hard during these sunny days.

Coloring for conservation (grades preschool to 4th): Print off Page 3 and cut out the Energy Tip Cards. Then have kids color the cards and tape them up in places around the house that will be good reminders for saving energy.

Learn about careers in the energy industry (grades 6 and up): The PUD is a proud supporter of Career Connected Learning, helping connect education with local industry for today’s students. Watch videos that describe interesting STEM careers at the PUD and talk to your student about what they would think about working in the energy industry.

To learn more about the PUD’s public education program, visit snopud.com and click on Education.

Operating since 1949, Snohomish County PUD is a customer-owned, notfor-profit electric and water utility that serves more than 360,000 customers in Snohomish County and Camano Island. For more information on conservation programs, visit www.snopud.com.