Group activity: everything is connected

Understanding how the world around us is interconnected.

How to begin:

• Basically, as a group, we try to think of as many different elements of a garden ecosystem as we can (vegetables, flowers, pollinators, squirrels, chickens, worms, compost, rain, sun, people, etc.) and we write them on cards.
• Each person takes a card.
• One person starts with a ball of twine, holds on to the end, and passes the ball to someone else whose card is interconnected with theirs and explains how they’re connected  (i.e. the person with the pollinators card might pass it to the person with the flowers card because pollinators rely on flowers for nectar).
• Gradually the ball of twine gets passed around to each person in the group, culminating in a beautiful, interconnected web.
• Everyone gently tugs on the piece of twine in their hand and we feel the ways that each element of an ecosystem is impacted by all the others.

We believe that such simple activities leave a great impact on how we feel about the world around us and help us understand the importance of ecosystems.