Tag: Reduce

Categories
Earth Education Green Lifestyle Most Popular Revealing Treasures in your Own Backyard

Clean Green 15 Challenge

As green school coordinator, I took up the Clean Green 15 Challenge to pick up trash for atleast 15 minutes as many times as possible. After picking up the trash, I would go to the website and enter the data. This data was accumulated throughout the year from students and teachers in the school, as well as community members and organizations, coming together to keep their local watershed clean.

Our green club picked up trash around our school yard, almost every Wednesday, for atleast 15 minutes.

I also spread the word via social media and local businesses. If anyone was going to be cleaning up they should input the data for their local school.

Today was the award ceremony for Baltimore County’s Clean Green 15 Challenge, at Chesapeake Terrace Elementary School.

The kindergarteners sang a song called “Going Green”, which was super cute.

After all the data was calculated, 17 schools were awarded for their efforts. Schools that won honorable mention received Samsung galaxy tablets. The other schools won prizes in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for elementary, middle and high school.

I am excited to share that Ridgely won 2nd place in middle school category! We won a $1,500 grant from the Education Foundation of Baltimore County, that we can use for some awesome green school projects!

It was a very nice ceremony! Thank you Debbie Phelps, County Executive Johnny Olszewski and Baltimore County Public Schoool system doe developing such impactful partnerships!

Check out the news story below!

Categories
Art Art Class Education Existence Green Lifestyle Most Popular Revealing Treasures in your Own Backyard

Save the Bay Sculptures

This quarter my students completed a recycled sculpture project that focused on how we can be more “waste free” and what we can do with the current plastic waste that we have accumulated.

I have been saving plastic containers and trinkets for this project, but students also went home and found plastic materials to bring in for their sculptures.

Students first watched this video about the impact of plastics and pollution in our water!

 

Then each student was asked to research and choose one animal from the Chesapeake bay area to create as a sculpture using plastic waste.

Students loved the challenge of using recycled materials to create something new.  The idea of impermanence and destroying something to bring life to a new idea, was a topic middle school students enjoy discussing.

Once students created their recycled material armature for their sculptures, they used different methods for embellishment. Some students used old yarn, recycled paper, random plastic beads, and cardboard.

This was a great project to get kids aware of the impact our choices make on our planet. We challenged each other to go waste free for a day! Some kids said it was really hard if not impossible, without a change from their parents.  This is also a great lesson in how others choices affect what we can or can not do, and the students felt more passionate about sharing with their families the importance of reducing plastic waste.