Waterloo Region District School Board

Every Waterloo Region school has plans to celebrate Earth Day and Week. Many activities are planned for students to explore ways to be kind to the environment and to take action to do their part as well. The following represents a sample of what will be going on in all of our schools.

Wilson Avenue Public School

Wilson Avenue is having an assembly - singing the song "whole world", reviewing our topic of commitment to the earth, talking about recycling and we are having an Earth day book slide show by our ESL students.
We will also be doing a month long playground cleanup.

Lackner Woods Public School
Planning is well underway for the week of April 21 - 25. Here are some of our activities:
1. Focus on energy reduction - try and keep the lights off when leaving the room. Paper light switch covers to decorate and remind kids to turn off the lights at home (e.g., in their bedroom) will be available.
2. Plant a sunflower - We are looking into purchasing sunflower seeds and earth for planting. We would like to ask students to bring in a small pot from home. Each student can plant a seed and take care of it at school until the long week-end in May when they can bring it home and plant it in their garden.
3. Walk to school event - Wednesday, April 23 the busses will be dropping our students off at the end of Zellar Drive so they can get some exercise and walk to school. Any available staff will meet the students and enjoy the exercise too.
4. Take a walk in the woods - We have a marked trail for classes to enjoy.
5. Keeping our community beautiful - Garage pick up throughout the week of the school grounds, woods and surrounding streets in our community.
6. Looking for some resources to use with your class? Visit ecokids.ca and have your students participate in a variety of excellent activities. We will leave a folder of some resources printed off of this site in the staff room for you to take a look at. Feel free to copy some and use them. Return the originals for others to peek at. We are also looking into gathering a selection of books and videos that all are welcome to use throughout the week.

Williamsburg Public School
For Earth Day we are holding a “Walk to School Day” and participating in a community clean-up.

Alpine Public School
In the morning of Earth Day we are cleaning up the school yard with our Catholic School neighbours.
Then we are hosting a litterless picnic at second nutrition break on our playground. Parents and friends are welcome to join our classes as we eat together and join the spring weather.
On the April 29 we are planting 200 shrubs along the woodlot at the back of our school property with volunteers from the RBC and the City of Kitchener. All shrubs and supplies have been donated by the City of Kitchener and the RBC has initiated this program and arranged for volunteers.
On April 25th we are having a dance-a-thon to raise money for trees for our Green Space Initiative.

Westmount Public School
On Friday the 18th, throughout the day, every class will be out to do a specified section of a yard clean up.
On Tuesday, Earth Day, John's Nursery will be planting three (50mm) Sugar Maples in an area of the schoolyard that has no shade. Each class at Westmount will take turns looking after the trees.
Also on Tuesday, every class will also be mulching trees that are already on the schoolyard. We had a truckload of “economulch” delivered this week.

Brigadoon Public School
We are celebrating Earth Week. On Monday we are having Ronno come in for twop assemblies, Tuesday we will promote our monthly Trekking Tuesday as trying to have the most walkers/bus students ever (our bus students are dropped a couple of blocks from the school), we will be doing a clean-up of the area. There will be more, but plans are still underway.

Southridge Public School
Monday:Begin "Toonies for Trees" campaign (collection to plant trees around our Creative Playground, an annual fundraiser)
Introduce Litterless lunches (we will weigh our lunch garbage daily and hopefully reduce significantly by Friday)
"Earth Hour " at Southridge 2:00- 3:00 pm
Tuesday: Entire Student Body assembles outside at 10:00 to sing 4 Earth songs out to the world.
Wednesday: "Walk to School Day"
Thursday: Schoool Yard and Neighbourhood clean-up
Friday: 9:15 Earth Week wrap up assembly...songs, skits, reports, our custodian reads aloud The Lorax, staff choir sings

Westheights Public School
Westheights is doing a yard and community clean up on April 22nd from 1:30 - 2:30.

New Dundee Public School
New Dundee is the little school that could! In a recent campaign to build a school in Africa through the “Me to We” organization started by Craig Kielburger, New Dundee educated its students on the plight of children in Africa and the lack of educational opportunities. This Earth Day, a local resident involved in community development in Africa will show how our fundraising dollars will be spent and how desperate African communities are for clean available water. A water conservation program will be launched to educate and inspire New Dundee students and their families to conserve and protect water in our “Global Well”. Our school community water saving actions will be tallied and forwarded to the SEEDS Foundation for recognition as well they will be entered into a school draw to attend an outdoor education trip to the Ground Water Festival this May. EVERY LITTLE DROP HELPS!

Queen Elizabeth Public School
We will kick off the day with a Walk to School Campaign. We will be encouraging all of our students to walk to school. The 2 staff members who are organizing the day's events, Natalie Mieles and Alison Bell, along with other staff members are going to meet our school bus at the church down the block to allow those students to walk to the school. We hope our school mascot, Leo the Lion, will make an appearance.
After O Canada, classes will be heading outside to participate in Operation Clean-Up for the period. Classes will be supplied with some plastic bags and gloves to clean up our playground.
During the middle block (11:00 - 12:40), we plan to create sidewalk art in front of the school displaying Earth Day messages.
During the last block (1:20 - 3:00), the primary division will be participating in a rotation of 6 different Earth Day activities.

Forest Hill Public School
Earth Day (Tues. April 22), Forest Hill will hold a whole school assembly at 1:45 p.m. where we are excited to host local music performer, Eric Traplin. He will perform for our school and promote Earth Awareness. Students were encouraged to wear green and blue that day and earn points for their colour houses. We will have another Earth Hour following our Earth Assembly, similar to the one we had in March where we will use as little electricity as possible.
Forest Hill will participate in their annual Community Clean-up where each class will sign up for an area in the surrounding neighbourhood community and help pick up garbage.
Litterless Lunch Days
Daily announcements will be made to promote Earth Facts

Westvale Public School
Westvale prides itself on being a Green School and this year on Earth Day we will be awarding prizes (book bags made of recycled juice bags) to the class with the least amount of lunch garbage. Earlier this year students were given Tupperware lunch containers to encourage them to have Litterless Lunches.
Our Environment Club will be leading our Pitch-In garbage clean up of the school yard.
The biggest event for us this year on Earth Day is a Used Book Sale - recycling at its best!!. We hope to collect 2000 donated books. Students will vote on a charity to receive the profits. Students are very excited about this event.

Centennial (Cambridge) Public School
Next week is Earth Week (Earth Day is on Tuesday April 22). At Centennial School, we are planning a special “Earth Event” for every day next week to help to raise awareness about what we can do as individuals to help make a difference to our environment.
Beginning this week, a waste reduction program is being implemented at Centennial. We are training a group of 26 Centennial students (2 per class), as our ”Green Team”. They are learning about ways to improve the recycling program at the school and they will be working to raise awareness in their own classes, about what can be recycled and what cannot. Also, we are trying to make better use of our composters by collecting organic waste for compost. Please do what you can to support this important initiative, by supporting the Earth Events next week and by talking with your family about what you can do in your own homes to reduce the size of your environmental “footprint”.
Monday - Litterless lunch day - All children are encouraged to try to bring a lunch without including anything that has to be thrown away, and as little as possible to recycle. We want to encourage children to think about what they bring to school in lunches and how to pack a lunch that produces less waste. Just by using plastic re-usable containers rather than sandwich bags and juice boxes, quite a lot of waste can be avoided.
Tuesday (Earth Day) - Come to school wearing blue or green and take part in an assembly about the importance of caring for the earth. A number of classes will go outside today to get our schoolyard cleaned up and ready for spring.
Wednesday is a community “Walk to school Day”. Why not get some exercise and save gas by walking to school rather than coming by car? (We understand that this isn’t possible for our bus students, just walk to the bus stop instead!). Each child who walks to school today will receive a sticker for their participation in this event.
Thursday is our “Junk Art Show”- On Fun Fair night, come to the gym to see a display of art that some of the classes have created using mainly recycled materials.
Friday is Adopt a Tree Day - Each class will find one tree in yard at the school to adopt, possibly to name and to study, as well as to care for, by mulching and watering it when the weather is dry.

Forest Glen Public School
Forest Glen is doing a penny drive for the Stephen Lewis Foundation during Education Week. The idea was brought forward by one of our grade 7 students who, as part of his preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, is doing a good work. He and I are organizing it together.

Rockway Public School
-recycle craft club
-trip to Children's museum for Energy Awareness and Conservation
-Earth Day Assembly
-Earth Day posters
-Earth Day songs
-school garbage clean-up
-Dairy Educator visit
-Earth Day raps
-Spirit Day, wear green and blue
-Earth Day paintings
-Earth Day literature
-Earth Day announcements

Highland Public School
At Highland we are organizing a litterless lunch, a Walk to School Day and turn off the television week.

Earth Week @ KCI
The OneEarth environment and social justice club is having an EARTHFEST 2008 April 17th from 6:00 to 10:30 in the KCI Auditorium. Come see popular students bands, visit info booths to learn about important concerns of our times, and buy organic, fair-trade treats, and hand-painted t-shirts.
On Friday, April 18th join the city for a 20-Minute Makeover. Get outside and clean up the litter that’s accumulated over winter (weather – and teacher – permitting).
Saturday, April 19th clean up Waterloo Park with Tim Hortons (10-12) and/or plant a tree in Laurel Creek with Sunoco (10-12).
From Monday, April 21 to Sunday, April 27 is International TV Turn-Off Week. See if you can turn off the TV and other unnecessary technologies all week.
On Tuesday, April 22nd, EARTH DAY, plant some trees with Mr. Rittinger at lunch time (weather permitting).
Wednesday, April 23rd is Waterloo Walk to Work Day. Leave your car at home and bus, bike or walk to school.

Cameron Heights CI
Our Roots and Shoots Environmental Club and Student Activities Leadership class are working together to run our Annual Campus Cleanup on Earth Day. From 8:20 until 8:45am all of our Block A students (approx. 1500) and staff (approx. 80) will be divided into areas on the school property and community property surrounding the Cameron Heights campus. Students and staff will work together equipped with garbage bags, recycling bags and disposable gloves to carry out the cleanup.