This past Friday was Earth Day. And Mark Denman Elementary School was quite busy with activities. Third grade teacher Matthew Thompson, whose students reminded us Earth Day began in 1970, had his excited youngsters outside picking up trash.
AUDIO: We had a college and career day recently. And one of the stands was a person from the state who talked to them about conservation and nature, and so this kind of went right along with it.
Fourth graders were busy tending to to one of the school’s courtyards. Teacher Lisa Palinski explains.
AUDIO: We’ve been wanting to spruce it up for a while. Well with it being Earth Day today we thought this was the perfect opportunity. And Mrs. Tucker, one of our other teachers, she is sort of facilitating this. So we’re going to plant some flowers, pull some weeds, and just make this space usable.
Fourth grade teacher Courtney Carpenter had her students involved as well.
AUDIO: Cleaning it up, making it just nicer to look at, and be a part of, for their school day; helping out the school community.
Rachel Lee, another fourth grade teacher, said Earth Day is a great time to talk about the Earth and how it works.
AUDIO: We’ve been talking about the ways that the Earth changes, and how we can help to keep the Earth healthy.
Then you had kindergarteners painting one hand green and the other hand blue. Teacher Aimee Miller explains.
AUDIO: So we’re making the Earth for a bulletin board. And we have; the water is the blue paint, and the Earth is the green paint. And we’re going to say “our little hands can do big things.” We’ve been learning about Earth Day; we’re been learning about the three R’s; reduce, reuse, recycle.
There were also a couple 2nd grade classes that got together to build roads. They were crushing old tires, mixing them up with a special mixture, and then using a bulldozer. Teacher Heidi Crane, working with teacher Alissa Wright on this, explains how that worked.
AUDIO: We’re using chocolate Cheerios in a cup for the tires, and we’re showing them how we grind them down to start to make a paste. And then we’re adding vanilla pudding to help make it look like it’s concrete. And the forks were made into bull dozers to then spread it out on a paper plate to make it look like a road.
A big thank you to Mark Denman teacher Laurie Grant for showing us around!!
