How do Kindergarten students identify relationships between study objects to understand the human ecosystem?

In Kindergarten, children explore the human ecosystem by learning about materials and tools that people use to create things, about how human-made items are important to people, and about things which can put them in danger.

In the Fine Arts, students “demonstrate an awareness that a variety of materials, tools, equipment, and processes can be used to create images “ and “use appropriate vocabulary to identify materials, tools, equipment, and processes used to create images”. Students demonstrate their understanding by asking different types of questions of objects in a system. This is helpful because students understand causal relations: that people intend to create objects, synthesize ideas, gather materials, use tools to create them, and come up with or modify specific processes. This process is very much hands-on.

Kindergarten students are expected to be able to “identify examples of technologies used in their lives”. This involves a special kind of thinking in which students do not perceive “whole places”, but are able to identify typical items which appear in different kinds of human environments. They are also supposed to understand culturally imposed rules upon how different tools are to be used. In addition to naming every day items which are used to prepare food and provide protection and shelter to their bodies, students also demonstrate aesthetic quality of some technologies when they “demonstrate an awareness that people make and use art”.

Health and Careers Education includes a component in which students “identify ways to avoid hazards and potentially dangerous situations in the home, at school, on the road, and in the community”. Students become aware of how human created environments can pose a danger to young children in their first year of school. Examples of technologies and civilization that students might learn about are highway systems and fast moving cars, concentration of powerful chemical agents, and drug and alcohol-induced crime against young children.