POSTER AND ESSAY CONTEST

Here’s an opportunity for Pickens County students to show what they know! This year’s Pickens County Soil Conservation Essay and Poster Contest is based on the theme Conservation Habits = Healthy Habitats.

Poster Contest
K5 through fourth grade classes may submit a poster. First place winners at each grade level will win a smoothie party for the entire class.
Each poster must be a class project of one class with only one entry per class. Posters must be postmarked by March 1st and received in the Pickens Soil & Water Conservation District office by March 5th. Please read Poster Guidelines carefully before submitting a poster.

Essay Contest
Students in fifth through eighth grades may submit essays for the contest. Cash awards at each grade level will be $40 for first place; $30 for second place; and $20 for third place.
An essay should be 300 to 500 words for 5th and 6th graders or 500 to 700 words for 7th and 8th graders. Teachers should submit only two or three essays per class. The deadline for essay entry is March 5th, postmarked by March 1st. A drop-off box is available at the PSWCD office. You may also practice your conservation habits and save paper by sending the essays electronically to mailto:PSWCD@innova.net?subject=Essay%20Contest. Please read all Essay Guidelines carefully before submitting.

Go Green Clemson Students!!! (Feel free to use my image!!!)

Let's celebrate Earth Day! - idea list

This year we'll celebrate the 4oth Earth Day! Clemson Elementary is planning to involve parents in the fun. If you would like to help contact us (send and e-mail to gogreence@gmail.com)

Read bellow for what you can volunteer to do. These all the ideas we've had so far, but feel free to come up with your own ideas as well!

• Guided walk in the path behind the school.
• Craft from recycled products (for example: Gobblet from lids, fish from 2L bottles, collages from paper and cloth).
• Invited local expert visits class to talk about caring for the earth
• Give a quiz on decay/recycling
• Teach a science lesson: decay, worm decomposition, etc.
• Plant something outside your classroom door or in the square gardens by 3rd grade playground.
• Read your class a book about the environment and/or earth day.
• Collect compost and recylables at lunch and/or snack and take them to the outdoorbins (behind the barn for compost, behind the cafeteria for plastic, glass, and metal).
• Empty the two school recycle bins with your class (in teacher’s lounge and cafeteria, items emptied into bin behind the cafeteria).
• Help kids write a letter to the local or national government asking to protect the environment.
• Read about/study current legislation that affects the environment.
• Have the classdebate the benefits/disadvantages of the legislation.
• Encourage kids who bring lunch to bring a waste-free lunch.
• Start a scratch paper pile that kids can use in your room fordrawing/calculating/notes etc.
• Assign all homework on one day to be written on re-used paper that is blank on one side.
• Take your class on a green field trip to the recycle center and landfill in Pickens (followed by a trip to the playground in pickens and a picnic lunch).
• Have Sprout visit your class and watch regular class room activities.
• Make a display in the CES hallway (near the cafeteria) on some Green Earth Day theme for the whole school to see.
• Have children write a story or draw a picture about how they will care for the Earth.
• Have the CES worm bin visit your classroom and learn how it works. (Ideal if done after lunch and kids can add their compost to the worm bin, but not required.)
• Do a math lesson with green facts (e.g. how much money could this class earn if theycollected aluminum cans and each one was worth 2 cents.)
• Have a contest to see how many re-used and/or recycled items the class can bring in one day (e.g. fleece shirt, recycled stationary, etc.)
• Have the class collect some item that often gets thrown out during the week.
• Take the item to the recycling center (e.g. batteries, computers, plastics #3-7, …) . GoGreen members will be happy to drop off items that were collected.
• Collect children’s size plastic hangers and thin cardboard. Make hang tags for cars that ride in the pick up line (blank for distribution next fall).
• Pull weeds in a school flower bed and put the compost in our compost bins by the 5th grade hall. Plant new plants if desired.
• Start a new recycle bucket in your classroom for plastics, glass, and cans.
• Develop a way with your class to empty this regularly (e.g. take it to the cafeteria bucket once a week or empty it into the recycle container behind the cafeteria).
• Collect recyclables and let the kids invent crafts with them (Go Green can supply samples. Consider collecting mesh bags, lids, cloth scraps, buttons, etc.)
• Make a sculpture from (clean) trash items for your room or grade level. Allow each child to glue on one small item to the structure.
• Post your class doing a Green activity on the school web pages.
• Write a script for Sprout to use in a future morning announcement.
• Have older kids find a green activity in their science books (using the index) and allow them to set it up for your class or a younger children’s class.
• Encourage your children to walk, bike, or bus to school. Recognize those who do. Calculate how much your class saved in gas this week because of bus, bike andwalkers.
• Ask kids to bring in pictures of themselves doing something green at home or in the neighborhood and post these in the classroom or hallway.
• Encourage kids to be more green at home. Brainstorm ways for them to do this as aclass. At the end of the week allow them to report their success to the class. (Doing something green could include: plant something, re-use something, startcollecting some recycling that you don’t do now, turn off some lights, walk to friend’s houses instead of driving, car pool, use the back of a blank piece of paper, etc.)
• Allow your class to pick up trash in areas around the school including the path behind the school.

Tell your parents! Tell Congress you want real food at school!

There is a national campaign "to GIVE KIDS the SCHOOL FOOD THEY DESERVE" Do you know about this? Here is a link with more information and a petition that can be signed if you want to eat food that is better for you and for the environment. 

Clemson Architecture Students receive an international prize for the design of a SELF-SUFFICIENT CITY!

Some of you saw the project when you visited the Picture Green event at Clemson University. 

The students competed with 708 other people from 118 countries and received the fifth prize for their big idea to make our cities better! Their project is a recycling project, where everything is constantly recycled into something usable. Little pods for living and working move while collecting urban waste to turn it into materials that are usable in cities.  The city works like a perfect cycle!

What do you think SELF-SUFFICIENT means? 

Links: SELF-SUFFICIENT City Competition, Clemson University School of Architecture

Credits: Clemson University Architecture Students Jason Butz, Frank D'Andrea and Carla Landa from GoGreen parent and assistant professor at Clemson University Martha Skinner's class. 

We did it! We walked to school!

It was soooo much fun!!!!! We had more then 273 walkers! Students, teachers, parents, siblings! Even Mayor Abernathy came out to shake hands with all the walking heroes. We were awake, fresh and ready to learn when we got to school - and happy that we kept our air a little bit cleaner for the morning! Let's do this more often!

For more pictures go to : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sproutpictures/sets/72157622736913301/

Thank you-s to the Mayor, to the Police and Clemson Univerity's Students for Environmental Awareness volunteers!

Walk to School Day - November 20th, 2009

Here's our chance to WALK TO SCHOOL again!!! Hurray!!! We'll be fresh at school and we help our air stay clean!!! Get on your feet and join the walk! Let's imagine, that we're making a "walking schoolbus": we are together so that we can enjoy the company - just as we would on schoolbuses, but we don't pollute our air, because this "walking schoolbus" moves by our feet!
Here's a map I made for you to see, where this "walking schoolbus" has stops. You can "hop on" at any stop. See the green footprints for locations and the time for the arrival of the walkers.

On South side of school:
7:20 - departure from intersection of Berkeley and Issaquena
7:22 - departure from Camelot (E. Anderson park)
7:30 - departure from intersection of Berkeley and Rock Creek Rd.
7:35 - departure from intersection of Berkeley and Evergereen
Country Walk walkers walk on their nature path to the bridge area
7:42 - join up with folks from Clarendon
7:45 - cross the bridge (closed on both sides by Clemson police)

On North side of school :
7:30 - Berkeley Village
7:35 - Village Walk North entrance
7:40 - Village Walk South entrance
7:45 - Pleasant View Drive

Those coming from further:
feel free to park near the walking schoolbus stops and walk with your child to school and back to your car.

Please, make sure that there is a responsible adult accomanying each child on the way to school!

The way home is not part of the fun, so just use your usual method of transortation home.

Halloween parade - what I spotted!

Kids, I just love the parade in downtown Clemson. It is so great to see so many kids walking in all kinds of costumes. This year, I spotted some great ideas which could very easily inspire you to recycle something into a costume for next year or just for fun!



Save an empty box and empty buckets and make yourself into a lego.

Save your wrappers from Moe's and make yourself into a kiss, a Hersey kiss (that is)!


--- Sprout!