9 years and below
Gardening as a hobby
My hobby is gardening. I love nature especially plants because they make my mind relax. I have developed a small garden in my courtyard and fenced it. I have grown different plants, particularly beautiful flowers like rose, jasmine there. Whenever I am free from my studies, I sit in the garden and enjoy myself.
I regularly water the plants and take care of them. Sometimes my friends also call at my house and I sit with them in the garden. I take care of the flower plants regularly in the morning and in the evening. When I visit my garden in the morning and see the blooming flowers my heart is filled with joy. In the corner of my garden I have a small plot of land where I grow vegetables. Mother becomes glad when I offer her vegetables every morning.
Tania Chand (8 years)
Logos College, Colombo
10 – 12 years
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle are the most simplest things you can do to help the environment. They are also known as the 3Rs. These things can even be done to household items.
Reduce
Reduce is just cutting down the usage of something. Like cutting down the amount of electricity used when you don’t really need it.
Reuse
It is making an old and useless thing into something that can actually be used, like taking an old pair of jeans and sewing it into a bag.
Recycle
Recycling is when you sort out a piece of garbage according to its material. When you do this, the recycling center picks up all the sorted garbage and tries to make it into clean and new objects. It is kind of like reusing but you have to chemically change the material before use.
Why should we practice the 3Rs?
It is important to practice the 3Rs when you are a child because then you can teach others as you grow up and others will follow the same. It helps the world to become a better place as there will be less items being thrown away so it will be cleaner.
If we don’t practice the 3Rs, garbage may be dumped on roads because of the lack of space in landfills. We may need a whole new planet for garbage disposal.
Balaraaj Subaangi (11 years)
Wycherly Int. School, Colombo
13 – 15 years
The dangers of air pollution
Air is a mixture of gases that exist on our world. About 75% of that mixture is Nitrogen and about 8% of it contains the oxygen we breathe. The remainder is other gases.
Air is the most basic need for living beings. No animal of earth can survive without air for more than a few minutes. Therefore without clean air all humans, animals and trees would perish and the earth would be nothing but soil and sea.
What affects most to the air is air pollution. Air pollution can be introduced as the changing structure of air, making it unsuitable for living beings. Air pollution has become one of the major problems on earth.
Air pollution is a major problem because of the side effects it causes. Polluted air is being breathed by more than 92% of the human population. Polluted air can damage the respiratory system and leads to diseases like respiratory failure and lung cancer. It is estimated that about seven million people die due to diseases cause by air pollution.
Air pollution also causes the government to use a huge amount of money to treat patients diagnosed with respiratory diseases. This directly influences the economic balance of a country.
Another danger of air pollution is the weakening of the ozone layer. The ozone layer is a layer of air at the top of the atmosphere that protects us be repelling harmful ultra-violet rays emitted by the sun and combusting meteorites. UV rays are harmful rays which may cause blindness, mutations and many other side effects. But because of air pollution, the ozone layer weakens, endangering millions of human and animal lives.
So it is up to us to decide between polluting the atmosphere and putting ourselves in danger or to save the atmosphere and save ourselves.
Dulanjana Ranasinghe (14 years)
Kegalu Vidyalaya, Kegalle
