SunWise

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has teamed up with the American Association for the Advancement of Science to bring sun safety education to science and children's museums.

The SunWise Program is a free, cross curricular, interactive kit that is ideally suited to museums and informal institutions for use during summer camps, weekend programming, planetarium activities, cart demonstrations, and for teacher workshops.

The kit was originally designed for use in K-8 classrooms to teach students about the science behind UV radiation and stratospheric ozone, health risks from overexposure to UV radiation, and action steps for protection. Therefore, it is cross curricular, and meets national education standards.

The SunWise kit includes a UV sensitive Frisbee (that turns bright purple when exposed to UV radiation), cards that provide ideas for UV and sun-themed activities in science, math, computer science, art, etc., and a free 12 minute video that provides a background on health effects associated with UV exposure and teacher interviews.

For more information contact Gaynelle Bowden of AAAS at gbowden@aaas.org, or you may visit the SunWise interactive site at www.epa.gov/sunwise.