I had a blast today hangin with awesome kids. I realized that none of their teachers celebrated Earth Day. I think one or two other after school staff planted seeds. I was all about making a big deal about it. I hung up posters and copied off earth-themed coloring pages and word searches and planned some activities. I figure, the one day of the year we are inclined to celebrate our mother earth- it ought to be the biggest eco-groovy party on Earth! Were talkin bigger than new years and even X-mas. Though most of the kids had no idea it was Earth Day. When I asked them about it, the ones who knew about Earth Day heard about it through Nickelodeon. They were advertising it, asking kids to turn off the TV for one minute, 9pm tonight. So I gathered together about 10 upper graders and we talked about what Earth Day means - how Earth is constantly providing for us life, the problems of pollution, ect. I asked them what they think they could do to give back to Earth. We got pretty jazzed up about it. We declared it to be Earth Week.
We made Earth Day signs out of recycled paper, marched and paraded around the school chanting, "Go green! Hug a tree! Every day is Earth Day!" (they made that one up) & "Reduce, reuse, recycle!" We picked up trash off the ground and hugged trees along the way (some of them kissed the leaves and flowers. On girl fell to the ground a few times, asking everyone to hug the ground, hah. We got some more kids to join us in our March too. Afterwards we planted seedlings in the garden then planned our enrichment for Friday. We (the 6th graders and I) are working on getting the kinders and/or 1st&2nd graders around the garden to play an Earth Week Game. I'm thinking about a Shoot Off (like basketball) but with various recyclable materials and labeled baskets - though the shapes and sizes may prove hard to toss - so I'll probably go with some kind of co-operative relay. Earth-friendly prizes?
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