EARTH DAY AT OHANA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
EARTH DAY in FLOWERS CLASS
EARTH DAY brought with it some interesting changes to our regular school day, which were embraced by all of us. Some of our friends asked the question: “Why is it dark in our classroom?” and there were enough of us who remembered and replied: “Today is EARTH DAY”. So what does it mean if it is EARTH DAY?
“EARTH DAY, EARTH DAY, what can we do on EARTH DAY, what can we do on EARTH DAY?
We can save our earth”. This is the first line of our EARTH DAY song.
We know that there are many things that we can do to help take care of our earth and one that we try to do every day is, bring only reusable plastic to school. Usually Friday is our “ZERO PLASTIC DAY” but we included it in our programme for today. Understanding that plastic is not good for our earth has motivated us not to bring plastic to school, on all other days of the week, so today seemed pretty usual for us. Our teachers have made us aware of how damaging plastic is for our oceans and the earth, with ocean creatures dying from eating plastic that is washed into the oceans.
We can help save the earth by doing the following:
Pick up garbage; switch lights off when we leave a room; open windows instead of air conditioning; use only reusable plastic and no disposable plastic; switch taps off after we wash hands; save energy without lights; we can walk and ride bicycles instead of drive cars.
We have a ritual of picking up garbage when we go to the park so this was another focus for our EARTH DAY activities. With our lights off the whole day, it meant that we did all of our art projects, reading books, playing games etc. in the dark. The darkness did more than remove the light from our day, it seemed to make us calmer. There was a stillness in our classroom, as the volume in our voices was lower and our energy level was quieter. Our teachers thought a lot about the lighting in our room; that perhaps it is something that they can change in the future to create a better balance for our learning and focus; and for our sight.
When we were having library time, we gravitated to the balcony and sat on the step reading, as this gave us more light, to see our books. Inside the classroom, it was quite dark, as the day was a little cloudy, with sunshine hiding behind the clouds.
We listened to our EARTH DAY song which John composed a few years ago and are aware of the many things that we can do, to preserve the earth for us and our future.
We love how our school brings these important universal themes into our learning so we can learn how “we too can make a difference!”
HAPPY EARTH DAY everyone.
EARTH DAY IN BUDS CLASS
For Buds children, we talked about what we are celebrating and why it iss important to have Earth Day. Our teachers told us that it’s a time for all of us to think about how to take care of our mother nature and to be able to tell the people around us that we can save our earth in our own little way. By not using electricity, conserving water, throwing the garbage in the right places are all ways of making sure that our earth is being looked after.
We went to the park and it was quite a nice weather outside. We looked for ants and bumblebees around the park and we saw lots of them today. Spring is really here! On the way to the park and back to school, we picked up some garbage and put them in the bin. This is to make sure that our community is clean and waste-free. We also watered our flowers outside the balcony while singing “One little flower” and “Earth day” song.
We also read a book with a title, “Here we are” by Oliver Jeffers. The books talked about how important for all of us to make sure that all living creatures are being cared for on Earth. This is our planet and this is our home.
EARTH DAY IN PETALS CLASS
Today we got quite the surprise as when we got to school– it was dark in the classroom! We saw Buds Class, too, and it was dark! We wondered what was going on and our teachers told us that today was Earth Day!
But what is “Earth?”
X: The earth is a circle and a sky and all the nice things.
Y: So many countries
Z: All the countries on the map
V: It’s everything we see!
They were right– the earth is a circle, it has a sky and all the nice things in it, and it has all the countries– so that means the earth is our HOME!
How do we take care of the earth?
X: “I respect you, you respect me.” so we need to respect the earth.
Y: Respect the animals, flowers, and ocean animals, too.
Q: No plastic day and no electricity day.
Pauline: Remember the lesson we had with Sayaka before? What happens when we throwgarbage in the ocean?
W: When we throw garbage in the ocean, then the ocean animals eat it, then they will get sick and they might die.
Pauline: That’s right. That’s why it’s important that we know how to throw our garbage nicely. Here in Japan, we separate our garbage into burnable, unburnable, and cans and bottles, right?
So our teachers told us that we are going outside, so that we can help pick up trash on the way to the Step Park. Off we marched with our garbage bags and our tongs that we can use to pick up trash! We did pick up a lot of things– which made us wonder……
L: Why many people throw trash?
R: It’s sad!
The garbage bag that we brought with us was filled with trash we picked up. Some people saw what we were doing and they smiled at us and said in Japanese, “Wow! You’re picking up trash! Thank you so much!” We’re glad that what we did had an impact on them– we hope we inspired them, and a couple of others to do the same, to change the world and take care of it, one simple step at a time.