A few years back my family and I spent a cool gray day walking on a beach in nearby Santa Monica California. My husband Steve had only just commented on the lifeless state of the bay when a school of dolphins surfaced beyond the breakers and swam up the coastline. We were spellbound.

My older daughter Anna was especially moved by the experience. And when our conversation on the way home turned to the then-occurring tuna boycott she was appalled to learn the plight of the dolphin. The next day she wrote a letter to Greenpeace informed us that she did not want tuna sandwiches for lunch anymore and initiated a boycott among her friends. Here was her first applied ecology lesson: Dolphins are in danger because of tuna sandwiches so if I stop eating tuna fewer dolphins will be killed. Her first-grader's activism was passionate and grew directly out of a magical experience with nature.

The three projects that follow are intended to help kids look at nature as a complex community of plants and animals and reflect upon the roles humans play when they enter those communities.