4th Grade Goes Green!
Earth Day 2008
Our class celebrated Earth
Day by “going green”! We did many
activities and projects to show our support of the environment. Here are some ways we have made a difference
this Earth Day.
Scholastic Classrooms Care
– Rainforest Reading Program
We participated in
the “Read 100 Books for the Rainforest” program through Scholastic. We had a poster on our classroom wall and
every time a student read a book, we would add a sticker to the chart. It didn’t take us long to read 100 books and
saved a section of the rainforest through the Rainforest Alliance.
It’s Easy Being Green
Display
We wanted to show
the rest of the school that it is easy being green! We made trees out of recycled brown paper
that was previously used on a bulletin board and made trees. Then we cut out leaves from recycled paint
sample swatches. On each leaf, we wrote
one easy way to be green. Some ideas
included picking up litter, shutting off lights when you’re not using them, not
leaving the water on when you brush your teeth, and using a reusable water
bottle for gym class.
Recycled Crayons
At
the end of the school year, many students are left with tiny pieces of crayon
that are too small to color with. We
started colleting these tiny crayon pieces last month and by Earth Day, we had
a bag full of them. We decided to
recycle them into new crayons. First,
each student took a mini-muffin liner and filled it with crayon pieces. Then we put the muffin tin in the oven set at
250 degrees for about 15 minutes. The
pieces melted together and became multicolor crayons. We took them out of the oven and let them
cool. They came right out the muffin
liner and we had new crayons to use that would have otherwise been thrown away!
Earth Day Report Card
Each
student filled out the Earth Day Report Card.
It made us stop and think about the things we are doing to help the
environment and gave us more ideas to try in the future.
PlanetFesto Virtual Ribbon Project
PlanetFesto.org
is a website that is trying to create a virtual ribbon that is long enough to
stretch around the world. Each student
created a 6 inch piece of the ribbon.
The reason the project was started was to share the concern for our
Earth and inspire people to take action and make a difference. Each student created a piece of digital
artwork or found a picture that represented their feelings about Earth. On the ribbon, students answered the
questions “Why do I love the Earth?” and “What am I going to do to make a
difference”. Many classrooms in our
school participated in this project.
Click here
to see the stretch of ribbon created by
Earth Day Commercials
In
groups, the students created commercials for Earth Day. Each group was given a topic and the students
were only given 30 minutes to brainstorm, develop, and practice their
commercial. They turned out great! Click on the links below to watch the
commercials.
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