On April 22nd our school came together as a community to celebrate Earth Day! We spent the day outside sprucing up our school yard by raking up leaves, mulching our gardens, starting seedlings and more! The children participated in crafts that recycled and reused items. The younger students really enjoyed making feeders for our feathered friends with leftover Cheerios from snack time. Everyone’s favorite was a lesson on composting worms and how to use the compost to enrich our soil. The children enjoyed separating the compost from the worms and setting up the bins again.
An important lesson for Earth Day was Trash the Trash Day, we asked the students to bring in a lunch that creates little to no garbage. Some suggestions that were made were packing their lunch in reusable materials and using thermoses or bottles instead of juice boxes, cloth napkins instead of paper, even silverware instead of plastic forks and spoons. Also instead of buying individually wrapped packages of chips, cookies, and other snacks, buy them in bulk and pack single servings in washable containers. Even yogurt can be purchased in large containers and scooped into smaller reusable ones for lunches. If every child did this every day, schools would save an average of 67.5 pounds of trash per year, per child, according to data from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Lastly, we focused on healthy snacks for the school to share. Along with fresh fruits and vegetables, we snack on hard boiled eggs from our very own chickens! As the children enjoyed these delicious and nutritious choices, the teachers talked about where food comes from and how to make healthy choices! Our students here are extra lucky as they get to see first-hand where they eggs came from and many of them even collected the eggs themselves!