We just started an Ecology/Environmental Club in our school for grades 4-6. We have about 20 students. Since we're only in the beginning of the club and don't have all of our funding yet, we're not exactly sure where to start or what to do the first few times. We meet every Tuesday. Our first meeting was just our students coming up with ideas, but not really ones we can do as of right now. Any ideas of some things we might be able to do with them?
Ways to conserve energy in the school--lights off when leaving a room, turning off some of the lights in the classrooms, monitors dimmed or off when not in use, etc. We had a competition with another school to see who could save the most energy over the course of a week. Community clean-up Announcements about environment Planning a competition for classes to see who can produce the least garbage
Good ideas so far...+1 for an outdoor trash clean-up around the school. Students could also make large posters of "environmental tips" to post in the school...like turning off lights, putting garbage in the right place, etc....
Thank you both! We are going to brainstorm ideas about conserving energy in the school then create poster to laminate.
Conserving energy in school? Turn lights off and use the natural lights from the windows. Hopefully you have lots of windows.
Set up a white paper/copy paper recycling box for messed up copies, extra copies that aren't need anymore, etc.
Today a friend of mine took me to this beautiful estuary area to go crabbing and I just feel in love with the place. If we had an environment club I would take them there. There was no trash and the blue crabs were numerous and huge. The best part was that there were hydro electric wires and a pipe line running through the area too but they did meshed well with the environment. If I could take a group of kids there they could see how modern society and nature can coexist beautifully.
I always had a box if Goos as Mrs.C said, for my quick workers to draw on or as scratch paper when we did math.
I don't know where you are but we use pine cones (without pb on them...don't worry seeds still get into open spaces) to feed the birds in winter. I hang them with kite string in the trees.
Tulips are nice but I think you should see if you could also plant vegetables. In my experience kids love being able to take home fruits and veggies they have had a hand in growing. And also you could teach them about compost and other basic horticulture practices.
This isn't a bad idea but be cautious, paper out of a xerox machine is fine but if your school has one of those old microfiche machines DO NOT use the discarded prints or of that. It is a different chemical and does cause health problems.
Our growing season here in Ontario is primarily the summer months when we aren't in school; planting would be at the end of May, then harvest in late August through mid-September, depending on the veggies. We are out of school all of July and August. If our climate permitted, it's certainly something we would do. We do have an extensive compost program in our communities (and our school as an off-shoot of that); all food waste and other compostable materials are placed in a separate bin. Another consideration for us is that many school yards here are not fenced in and are used by the community outside of school hours. A vegetable garden would, unfortunately, not last very long.
You can look for environmental organizations to partner with or enter contests and promotions put on by those organizations. We have one here (in Canada) that collects plastic shopping bags and re-uses them to make frisbees and bird houses for the schools. So our club collects, counts and sends in our bags and then distributes the frisbees when they arrive.
We are spoiled here in Texas. You can plant tomatoes in September for a crop late November. I have my class doing that. We don't have a garden but a parent donated a ton of Topsy turvy tomato planters and they are hanging upside down by our large windows. The kids have named them.
We did this several years ago; the bags were woven into sleeping mats and shipped to communities were people had lost their homes and belongings due to natural disasters. I'll have to look into that organization you mentioned; it sounds like a great project.
What about this??? http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/colgate MrsC love the idea of bulbs. You could probably get other people to donate parts of other plants...like lilies, hostas. I had to split some and thought I wish someone could use these. If I were closer I would give ya my some of my raspberry hoppers. Lol. They fruit around 4th of July & September (actually they are still producing). Lol. They spread like crazy!!!!
