Green School Day

It's Hump Day!!  This means the week is halfway over, and that there are only 7 days left of students.  If you read my post from Monday then you know our school had a Green School Celebration that day.  I am totally taking this post to BRAG about how awesome our school is!!

First, we are the FIRST and ONLY Green School in our county.  That includes the 17 elementary, 6 middle schools, and 5 high schools.  We were awarded this honor by the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education and means that we use a "holistic, integrated approach to authentic learning that incorporates local environmental issue investigation and professional development with environmental best management practices and community stewardship".  We have been working ALL year to meet this goal, and I think we totally rocked it!!!  

Every grade level took on a different environmental project, everything from creating safe habitats for local animals to planting local plants, recycling and collecting rain water to use to water the landscaping.  Here's a run-down of what each grade level was responsible for:

Pre-Kindergarten - Building and maintaining toad houses.
Kindergarten - Building and maintaining butterfly houses, participating in a TerraCycle Brigade to recycle Entenmann's Little Bite Pouches.
1st Grade - Building and maintaining bird houses, participating in a TerraCycle Brigade to recycle Elmer's glue sticks/bottles and Lunchables containers.
2nd Grade - Decorating and maintaining rain barrels, participating in the Energy Patrol (handing out awards and citations for classes that are doing their part to conserve energy)
3rd Grade - Building and maintaining vermacompost bins (using red worms to create fertile soil additives), participating in the planting of native plants and maintaining the native plant garden.
4th Grade - Building and maintaining a rain garden, participating in the clean-up of a nearby stream and keeping track of the pH levels in the school water.
5th Grade - Testing various soil samples to determine the healthiness of the school's soil.

We have had A LOT of help from the community and the different agricultural programs available locally (including 4H).  Our Green Day was a chance for the school and community to learn about the different projects each grade level was responsible for.  We went around the school and grounds to visit various stations that explained the projects of the school, and to end the day we planted many, many native plants.

Kindergarten worked hard to create butterfly houses to help give the local butterflies a place to rest during their migrations and to keep them safe and warm during the winter.  We started with simple kits from the local hardware store.  Each kit contained 6 pieces.

Each kindergarten student was able to paint and decorate a different piece.  When they finished drying, an adult volunteer used a hammer and nails to put them all together.

Because each student painted their own piece, each butterfly house has its own personality and style.  Each one is unique, just like our kindergarteners!

 

I couldn't be prouder of all the hard work they put into their projects.  They did a super awesome job!  Here's a few shots of different stations we visited during our celebration.

 Here we are checking out how first grade made their birdhouses and bird feeders.

 This is us learning all about the healthy foods we can grow in a garden.

 Next we learned how to make bird and butterfly feeders out of simple house-hold items.

 We then used pipe cleaners and cereal to make a bird feeder we could hang on a tree at home.

 We got a chance to learn how the things in the community end up in our drinking water and how we can help to keep them out!

 Probably my favorite part of the day was getting to meet Spot, a rescued diamond-back terrapin, which just happens to be our State Reptile.

We learned so very much about the environment and how we can help preserve it.  Since we did so much work for the Green School application, is was easy-peasy to apply to be a Bay-Wise School.  Since we live so close to the Chesapeake Bay, it was important for them to understand how what they do can end up in the Bay.  Since we did so much work, it was a cinch to become a Bay-Wise School too!  I am so super proud of how hard we worked, and as I get more pictures of our awards and plaques I will share them with you!!

The Final Countdown

Happy Monday!!  Today starts our countdown to the last day of school!!  We have just ten more days of school this year!  If you're like me and live anywhere in the Northeastern part of the United States, you will have a few snow days to make up.  For us, it was a whole extra week tacked on to the end of the year, besides the various days during the year we lost (professional development days or Spring Break time).  I am going to try my hardest to keep my littles enthusiastic and engaged for these last two weeks (not to mention, myself!!)  In order to help with that, I am going to use an AWESOME freebie that my friend Jennie D. over at J.D's Rockin' Readers came up with.  It's called The Final Countdown (anybody else flashback to the Europe song too??) and you can grab it for FREE at her TPT store! {click on the title above or the picture below to go grab a copy for yourself}

I can't wait to start using this little gem with my kinders!!  Jennie, the lucky duck, only has 5 days of school left.  However, she made this packet for ten days so it's PERFECT for me to use these last two weeks of school.  Here's how she does it (included in the packet):

I can't wait to try out all of her awesome suggestions, each one is a perfect opportunity to add a little fun to our end of the year activities!  I'm a really big fan of the 'Take a Book Outside to Read' option, and when that one gets chosen I'm going to let my kinders take out their Daily 5 Book Boxes and practice Read to Self or Read to Someone.  They are going to LOVE to do that outside!!

Tomorrow is our school-wide, all day long Green School Celebration (check my post Wednesday to here all about how we are a Maryland Green School AND a Maryland Bay-Wise School!!) so I think I may have to 'facilimanipulate' their choice tomorrow so I can make sure it's something we can fit into our day.  Jennie also included a few blank cards in this freebie that you can use to fill in your own idea.  I think I'm going to swap out her 'Chew Gum in Class' card for one I make myself.  Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to be able to use this one in my room.  But honestly, I'd be worried my kinders would swallow the gum (even if I reminded them not to).  So I think I'm going to swap that one out for a 'Eat a Freezie-Pop Outside' card.  Whatever day this card is picked, we'll eat a freezie-pop outside after playing at recess to help us cool down.  I will post about our special countdown activity each day for the last two weeks of school!!

Don't forget that tomorrow, and every Tuesday after that, starts the LINKY party for Book Talk Tuesday hosted by Mrs. Deanna Jump!  Check back with me to learn about how I'm going to tackle Book Talk Tuesdays!!  I hope to give you a FREEBIE or two as well on some of these Tuesdays.

Hope you have a great week, and I hope you are starting your end of year countdown!! If your year is already over, I'm super jealous so happy for you!!  ;-)

Green School

It's finally Friday!!  Well, technically, my Friday was on Wednesday since we haven't had any students yesterday or today!  Yesterday was an AWESOME day that we got to spend planning with our teams and working in our classrooms to get stuff done.  How wonderful is that!!  Today is a day full of meetings, and there is NO SCHOOL on Monday for ANYONE!!  :-)

One of the meetings I will be attending today is for our Green School Committee, otherwise known as The Green Team.  We are trying to get our school to qualify for our state's BayWise Program.  Since we live so close to the Chesapeake Bay, many of our streams and waterways dump into the Bay.  So, we're trying to teach our students the importance of caring for our environment.  One of the ways we're doing that is by assigning each grade level environmentally friendly activities.  For example, in kindergarten we will be planting native Maryland trees (including an AWESOME butterfly bush), we will be building butterfly houses, hatching chickens from eggs in an incubator, participating with our first grade classes to identify the trees around our school for a Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt, and collecting Entenmann's Little Bites Pouches as part of their Tera Cycle Brigade.

All of our  students will be bringing in their pouches and our kindergartners will be responsible for the collection and counting of the pouches so that they can be sent out and our school will earn some money!!  I think my favorite part is going to be building butterfly houses for our butterfly bush.  We've never done that before!!

See how HUGE our butterfly bush got over the summer?!?!  It has been trimmed down and is in the process of regrowing, which has provided awesome lesson opportunities in our classrooms!

On a separate note, since we only had a three-day week for the students this week, my Art Center became a 'snowy field'.  How, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you!!  I took shaving cream and covered the entire Art Center table, and the littles were allowed to use their fingers to write any words they wanted to our to draw whatever pictures they wanted.  Bonus: it was a great way to get the table cleaned and the room smelled pretty good all week, too!

They had SO VERY MUCH FUN with this simple activity!!  Whelp, gotta get back to my meetings!  We have a three day weekend, so I wish you a very happy weekend for however long yours is!!