Ideas For California Elementary Schools to Help Children Be More Earth-Aware
Children represent the future of our planet, and they are open-minded and teachable. Put these two facts together and you can see why it’s important to educate people about environment and conservation issues while they’re still young! There are many ways that California elementary schools can help children learn to be more earth-aware and more responsible present and future citizens. Here are some ideas.
– Start an in-school recycling program: If your school is still not recycling paper, it’s not too late to start! Schools use millions of pounds of paper of all shapes, sizes, and types each and every year. Many millions of those pounds are now being recycled thanks to environmentally-aware teachers and staff. Keep several recycling bins in the parking lot to encourage patrons to recycle as well. Each grade should have a weekly designated “recycling squad” that goes around to each classroom daily to empty trash cans into the recycling bins.
– Have a “recyclables sculpture” demonstration: The PTA can send home flyers encouraging every child to bring just one piece of recyclable material from home by a designated date. In an average school, this means about 500-600 pieces of trash! Have parent volunteers collect the trash from each classroom and create a “recyclables sculpture” on a movable sheet of light plywood. Display the sculpture as a demonstration to the children about how much we throw away each day and the difference each of them can make when they recycle.
– Host environmentally-themed school assemblies: Shows That Teach is a wonderful business whose employees stage environmentally-themed school assemblies in California. Students are educated about environmental issues through entertaining musical productions that are never preachy, but get the conservation point across in a fun way. At school assemblies in California, Shows That Teach addresses recycling, wise water usage and a host of other timely topics for children in the Golden State.
Children want to be responsible Earth citizens, and schools can go a long way toward helping them achieve that goal.