Garden City High School students from H.O.P.E. performed a skit about littering for students from Arleen Brown and Patricia Tuozzo’s classes at Hemlock. On January 29, 2010, the high school students from the Garden City H.O.P.E. club (Helping Our Planet Earth) visited Hemlock, Homestead, and Locust schools to teach children the importance of recycling and the benefit it has on the environment. For the third consecutive year, the students in H.O.P.E. brought skits, projects, and hands-on learning activities to engage the kindergarten and first grade students.

For the kindergarten classes, H.O.P.E. students began with a skit, teaching the importance of recycling and picking up litter. The skit educated the children in other ways to help save our earth as well, such as turning off the television, planting a tree, or picking up garbage. The kindergartners created drawings with the theme: “What I will do today.” Each student illustrated their ideas for saving the environment including planting flowers, turning off the water while brushing teeth, recycling plastics, and many more.

H.O.P.E. students helped kindergartners brainstorm ideas for illustrating “What I will do today” for the environment. The first graders did a similar lesson. Instead of the skit, they created a “T-Chart.” Students picked out pictures of “good” and “bad” stuff for the environment. They placed the pictures on the T-Chart based on whether they thought the illustrated item would help or harm the earth.

As a culminating activity, H.O.P.E. students gave out paper hands for children to write their names on - a visual promise to help save our environment. The high school students will be fashioning the children’s hands into an image of the earth and returning the assemblages to the primary schools for display.

Working in small groups and one-on-one, high school students assisted children with visualizing their ideas for helping the environment. H.O.P.E. students would like to thank club advisor Robert Wiedenhoft for his assistance in organizing the primary school visits. The kindergarten and first grade classes had fun, while at the same time learning the importance of helping our environment. It was a fun-filled and educational day for all!

Crayons at the ready, this Hemlock student talked through his ideas for creating his illustration.