The Annapolis campus is a certified Green School. During our Maryland Green School initiative, primary school children learned about stewardship.  On Green School Day we recognize their many accomplishments with school activities!  Here are just a few!

 

In technology class, students started the first of two Nearpod activities regarding recycling, along with a discussion on pollution and what goes into a landfill.  They talked about repurposing (the big topic was all those Amazon boxes!  One Second Grader makes robots out of them!).  Our children were able to see a 360 degree view of a landfill, in which the background was beautiful mountains (looked like Colorado) and evergreen trees.  We also talked about how the environment needs to be healthy for humans and animals and how cars and factories emit pollution.  One positive thing that has come out of the pandemic is that cities that are always shrouded in smog had their air clear due to its residents staying at home and not using their cars to travel to work or school, etc.  Our young students also discussed how to have more recycling each week, rather than trash, and learned that a law was recently passed in Maryland outlawing the use of Styrofoam containers because you cannot recycle them and they do not break down.  We are the first state to implement this law.  

 

Part two of the Technology lesson, takes the students inside a recycling plant in Washington, D.C., Fayetteville, NC and Wilson, NC  and shows the materials being picked up from a neighborhood,  how the center receives the materials and the next steps in the process of recycling. Interspersed between the videos are short “quizzes”  about the videos they will see on recycling.

 

In Music all classes  sang the “Garden Song” and dialogued on how we could improve our environment.  Our children are very sweet stewards of the Earth. 

 

Third graders shared the things they remembered to become a Green School. Our lovely Butterfly Garden was the #1 mentioned idea!  Some students shared how we can continue to grow as a Green School. Third graders also started reading the book, Velma gratch & the way cool butterfly. In Second Grade, there was Green Day Singing and Dancing, a Green Day read-aloud and a Green Scavenger Hunt! Fourth Grade took a virtual field trip to a recycling plant and had a discussion about how recycling can contribute towards a better environment.

 

In Science, the First and Second Graders read The Lorax.  They talked about the differences between wants and needs and to make sure that we don’t buy too many “wants” because that uses a lot of resources and can hurt our environment.  

In Third and Fourth Grade Science students watched short videos on the life cycle of plastic bottles and how T-shirts are made. They saw how many resources are used to make both and their environmental impacts. This showed us how important it is to reuse, reduce, and recycle! Students also talked about the differences between wants and needs were and to make sure that we don’t buy too many “wants” because that can hurt our environment.

 

In First Grade, our children are learning about sensory words.  They are learning about how authors use them to describe known objects or things such as honey, seeds, clouds etc.  To help us understand how authors use sensory words we read the book My Friend Earth by Patricia MacLachlan and Francesca Sanna.  Our children then sorted the sensory words (glistening, silent, fierce etc..) from the book by the sense the author used to describe the things found on Earth. First Graders also thought of nouns that can be found in nature.  Then they used the adjective, green, to describe it in a sentence. In Spanish, some classes were able to see the Natural Wonders of Puerto Rico through Google Earth.