Methodological Toolkit₂
Refresh your lessons and workshops with interactive activities on topics that interest your students – cosmetics and everyday products they use.
What is it about?
This methodological toolkit offers hands-on activities to explore the hidden world of chemicals in cosmetics, cleaning products and health supplements.
Through interactive exercises, students learn to critically examine everyday products, uncover potential health and environmental impacts, and reflect on consumer choices. The toolkit empowers young people to ask the right questions and make informed, responsible decisions in their daily lives.
What is inside?
The toolkit includes 11 engaging activities designed for use in the classroom or even outdoors, which we strongly encourage. The activities are organized into excursion plans, experiments, as well as short and longer activities.
Whether you want to refresh your biology lessons, enrich chemistry lab work, or strengthen your students’ English skills by examining everyday cosmetic products, this toolkit offers a flexible and inspiring resource.
You can download all activities in one PDF, or select individual ones below.
Activities
What Do You Stand For?
20 min., outdoors, indoors
How often do you really think about your own habits when it comes to makeup, skincare, or medicine? In this activity, we’re putting your daily choices to the test – literally!
What is in your cosmetics?
45 min., outdoors, indoors
In this activity, we’ll use a special app to scan cosmetic products and analyze their ingredients. You’ll learn how to spot harmful chemicals, understand what’s safe, and become a pro at choosing health-friendly products.
GreenGate memory
20 min., outdoors, indoors
We’re going to play memory, but with a twist: one of you holds a fancy term from the world of cosmetics, health, or the environment, and the other holds its definition. Will you find your pair?
Store-bought or home-made?
60 min., indoors, possibly outdoors (flower picking)
What’s better, making your own bath bombs or buying them from the store? Let’s put it to the test!
Journey through the life-cycle of cosmetics
45–60 min., indoors
Ever wondered where your favorite perfume comes from? From the mining of raw ingredients to the moment you toss the empty bottle, every cosmetic product has a hidden story and it affects more people, animals and places than you think!
Greenwashing detective
30 min., indoors
Not all “eco-friendly” products are as green as they seem! In this activity, you’ll look at product images and their flashy, persuasive commercials – just like real consumers do.
Experiments
Water Filtration
40 min., outdoors, indoors
Imagine you’re out in the wild with only dirty water, how would you make it clean? In this hands-on experiment, you’ll build your own water filtration system!
Bacteria in makeup brushes
45 min., indoors
Think your makeup brushes are clean? Think again! In this eye-opening experiment, we’re diving into the hidden world of bacteria living on your everyday beauty tools.
Excursions
How to prepare a good excursion?
Outdoors
Tired of sitting at a desk? It’s time to break free and take learning on the move! An excursion is all about exploring, discovering, and seeing things from a whole new perspective – outside the classroom!
Waste Water Treatment Plant Visit
Outdoors
This excursion will show you what a WWT plant can and cannot capture and – most importantly – what each of us can change to make the water we use really clean.
Natural cosmetics producer visit
Outdoors
Ever wondered how natural skincare products are made? Get ready for an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of a real natural cosmetics manufacturing plant!
Who created the toolkit?
Živica is an NGO that inspires change. We want to create a world where everyone is encouraged to seek their own nature. We believe that nature can teach us a lot. Environmental problems challenge us to turn our attention to our actions because changing problems only from the surface is not a globally sustainable long-term solution.
The GreenGate project (reg. n. 2021-1-CZ01-KA220-ADU-000026171) and GreenGate₂ project (reg. n. 2023-2-CZ01-KA220-YOU-000174554) were implemented as part of the Erasmus+ programme with financial support from the European Union.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
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