Earth Day Groceries

Reports from 1998 Participants

This is Part 11, reports from schools 417 - 490, received after May 24,
including special reports from schools supported by the donation of
paper bags from the American Forest and Paper Association.

Clicking on a linked location will take you to the participant page for that location. If you would like to write to any of the participants, click on their email address.

Use the Guestbook or email to send in your reports. (Remember to include your school name, location, and number of bags decorated) The most recent reports are listed at the top of this page.


We have participated in this project, I believe for 4 years now. We get out bags from the local Stop and Shop. They have been great! We did not report in last year, however all our K-3 students decorated bags which included approximately 470 students. This year we plan to do this project again and should have all 484 students participating.
Candice A. Dunn CandyTeach@aol.com
Kathleen E. Goodwin School
Old Saybrook, CT 06475
We participated in this project last year and plan on doing the project again this year. It was a tremendous success and the kids had a wonderful time decorating the 500 bags we had obtained from a local store in Beaufort. The messages they came up with were awesome and we got some really positive feedback from the customers, the grocery store, media, and other members of the community.
Debby Hoell cn3690@coastalnet.com
Beaufort Elementary School
P.O. Box 131 - Beaufort, NC
We participated last year in the Earth Day Grocery Bag Project. Approximately 300 bags went to area gracery stores. The Students had a wonderful time and felt that they were making a difference.
Vanessa Johnson vvandyne@yahoo.com
Cushman School
Florida
My fifth-grade kids thought it was great. The grocery store we worked through was very helpful too. The kids felt like they were actually doing something to help the environment. We decorated over 300 bags.
Jason Theler Jason.Theler@nridge.alpine.k12.ut.us
Northridge Elementary
Orem, Utah
Our kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade classes have decorated grocery bags for the past 3 years. We have gotten such positive feedback that we hope to make it a school-wide project this year! 250 bags were donated each year by our local stores and they displayed several in their store as well.
Mary Mertins Redapplek@yahoo.com
Kindergarten
Pea Ridge Elementary
Pace, FL
This year at Moanalua Elementary School, 350 students in 14 classrooms in grades 2, 3, 5, and 6 decorated 500 bags from the Salt Lake Longs store. This project was one of the first multi-grade internet projects we participated in. It allowed teachers, students, parents, and the community to become more aware of environmental issues affecting Earth. Students came up with titles and pictures depicting ways to save the earth. From discussing causes and solutions, the students can now continue their roles as keepers of the earth.
Moanalua Elementary School
Honolulu, Hawaii
http://kalama.doe.hawaii.edu/MES/grade2/index.html
Marjorie Y. Serikawa Marjorie_Serikawa@notes.k12.hi.us
Hi! I'm the education coordinator for the Clinton County Solid Waste District here in Wilmington, Ohio. For Earth Day 1998, I worked with three of our elementary schools - Clinton Massie, Denver Place and Holmes School - to organize an Earth Day Groceries project. We had three local grocery stores donate bags. Overall we decorated about 2,000 bags. It was a wonderful activity and we hope to have all nine of our elementary schools participate next year. Thanks for a neat idea. We had a great response from the community and the local newspaper covered the event.
Kimberly Wilson (ccswmd@erinet.com)
Clinton-Massie, Holmes, Denver Place
http://www.postcom.com/swmd
Wilmington, OH
I am a kindergarten teacher from Devine, Texas. Our seven kindergarten classes at Ciavarra Elementary in Devine decorated approx. 300 grocery sacks and delivered them to our local H.E.B. They used them to sack groceries on Earth Day, but only at the customer's request. I wish they would have been pushed them a little more. The manager said it costs them more to sack with paper sacks then plastic so they really did not push them.
Kitty S. Jones kittyj@flash.net
When planning Earth Day activities at my company this year, West Valley Nuclear Services (a contractor with the Department of Energy and New York State Energy Research & Development Agency), I found your story about the grocery bag program on the internet. Our company partners with the local school and has a mentoring program with students from Grades 3 - 12. Each year we have a community outreach program with area schools during Earth Day. My goal was to have my company, the mentoring students, the elementary students (K-6), and the local market join forces in sharing their "Pollution Solutions" with the overall community.
The mentoring students adopted classes and went to each classroom and gave presentations about the program. Students were asked to come up with messages that focused on air, water and land pollution prevention.
The elementary school has approximately 300 students and we received 293 colorful bags which were then hand-delivered to the market to be given out to customers. Our photographer took pictures of the mentors handing out bags for our company newsletter. Since most of the students included their first name and grade, the proprietor of the West Valley Market cheerfully hand-selected bags for families that came in requesting their child's artwork and message for Earth Day. (We have a very small community!)
We had a contest for the most creative, most original, best presentation, and best message bags and 24 students won prizes.
This program was a win-win situations for everyone involved. Our company received goodwill and publicity for being an environmentally-conscious good neighbor, the mentoring students adopted classes and become role models for the younger children and honed some of their presentation skills, the elementary students learned about the environment and 'told their story' on the grocery bags, the local market was seen as another partner with the school, and the members of the community was able to take home the students' messages.
To sum it up, this turned out to be an excellent vehicle to communicate the importance of taking care of our earth and to practice the 3 R's of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Thank you for letting us share in the fun!
Cathy Atkinson (atkinsc@wv.doe.gov)
West Valley Central School
http://www.wv.doe.gov/
West Valley, New York
Our K-6th graders decorated approx. 300 bags for Sterk's grocery store . We even got our bags written about in the local newspaper.As Earth Week coordinator, I was unaware this activity was linked acrossthe nation. How exciting tofind this info! We also collected pennies for the rainforest, did a bio-degradable ballon release, made birthday cards for the earth, etc. We are planning bigger things for next year...
Judy Lazar (lazar@mail.icongrp.com)
Washington Elementary
East Chicago IN 46312
My Third graders and after school computer class at Bonny Kate Elementary in Knoxville, Tennessee decorated 50 grocery bags for Food City this year. We also video conferenced with several classrooms about recycling. Thanks for a great project!
CaveL@ten-nash.ten.k12.tn.us
For the first time the students at the Kildonan School participated in the Earth Day Grocery Project. In their Science classes each of the students decorated a grocery bag provided by the Grand Union in Amenia, New York. The students decorated 32 bags which were then given back to the Grand Union to be distributed. They really enjoyed participating in the project and learned about types of pollution and ways to help preserve our environment.
Tammy Polhemus (tlpolhemus@ibm.net)
The Kildonan School
Pleasant Valley, New York
What a wonderful project! Bright Elementary (gr 1-5) decorated 500 grocery bags and they were distributed by the local Krogers store. Please add us to your statistics.
Cathy Mund (cmund@seidata.com)
Bright Elementary
Bright, Indiana
Greetings from Bergen County Special Services. 300 special needs students, ages 4 to 21, from three schools in our district participated in the Earth Day Groceries project. The local Grand Union provided 300 bags for our students to decorate. Our art teachers provided stencils for students with physical disabilities to imprint their bags with the ³Earth Day 1998² logo. On Earth Day we had four students with their parents distribute all the decorated bags at the Paramus Rt. 17 Grand Union. The store manager had his photographer there taking pictures of the students distributing the bags to shoppers. We had a wonderful time participating in this project and are looking forward to doing it again next year. We hope to send you a link to our web page in the future. Thank you for this opportunity to celebrate Earth Day 1998.
Val Devlin, OTR valdev@bergen.org
Earth Day 1998 Coordinator
Hackensack, New Jersey
My 8th grade ART Elective (30 students) participated in this as a part of our printmaking unit. They were bummed when I restricted their subject matter, and were overwhelmed when I brought in 500 bags to print, but they really got into it once they learned the value of the 'printmaking process'! We printed 450 successful bags in 2 42 minute class periods.
Before we took them down to our local Albertsons store, I had them all pose with their best print, and got a class photo which they thought was just another one of my REALLY Dumb ideas! However, they changed their mind when one of the boys in this class (the one who made the best stamp and everyone wanted to borrow it) was killed in a motorcycle accident 2 weeks later. They all wanted copies of our class photo.
Thanks for sharing this opportunity on many different levels. I plan to participate in this as my own tribute to Jerrad for the rest of my teaching years.
Laurie Johnson lauriej@bham.wednet.edu
Bellingham, Washington
I am writting to you to give you information about our participation in the Earth Day Groceries project.318 bags were designed by students in grades k-5, from the Montauk Public School, (Montauk, NY 11954). The bags were provided by The Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association. They were distributed by the local IGA on Earth Day. Even though this was the 5th annual Earth Day Groceries Project, this was the 1st year that Montauk School participated. Two of the bags were kept and sent to Coleen Shine, in Arlington Virginia(she's from the paper council) so that they may be used by her for public relations purposes. We loved the project and the community did too!
Sincerely,
Alice Housenecht and Sue Nicoletti nicolettijs@hamptons.com
320
We loved the whole project! Thanks! We want to participate next year, too!
Applied Technology (cayers@tesd.k12.pa.us)
Devon Elementary School
http://www.tesd.k12.pa.us/
Devon, Pennsylvania
Our art teacher, Carolyn Buehl, used this project as her Earth Day activity. Then she hauled the 200 plus bags to our local grocery store. Thanks for the idea.
Renae Taylor (RenaeT345@AOL.com)
Chautauqua Elementary School
Vashon Island, Washington
In order to promote environmental awareness, Huntington Intermediate School, in Huntington, New York, recently held a Pollution Solution Fair. As their contribution to the fair, the students in the fifth grade classes of Ms. Bartsch, Mrs. Ricco, Mrs. Regan and Miss Von Vange participated in the Earth Day Groceries Project 1998.
Southdown Supermarket generously donated one hundred-fifty bags which the students enthusiastically decorated and delivered to the store on April 21st. On Earth Day, April 22nd, delighted customers received their groceries in gaily decorated bags which contained various environmental messages.
The Earth Day Groceries Project enabled the students to participate in various cross curricular activities such as creating graphs in Mathematics class, writing poetry in Language Arts class, and in Social Studies, incorporating the Earth Day Groceries Project results of their respective states, in their Hyperstudio State Presentations.
The Earth Day Groceries Project enabled the children to form a partnership with a merchant in their community, in order to promote environmental awareness not only in our village, but throughout the world.
The following poem, written by Jenny, best describes the children's feelings towards pollution.

Pollution
dirty, disgusting
polluting, destroying, killing
it can be prevented
Kills
Jean/Joe (jcb88@ix.netcom.com)
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
800 bags
-- Pearson Elementary School
-- Mission, TX
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Buena Vista/Padiera Magnet School
-- Nashville, TN
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
900 bags
-- Bennetsville Middle School
-- Benettsville, SC
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
800 bags
-- Pottsgrove Elementary School
-- Pottsgrove, PA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
200 bags
-- The Walden School
-- Swarthmore, PA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
200 bags
-- Step by Step Learning Center
-- Morton, PA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Garfield School,
-- Longbranch, NJ
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
150 bags
-- Ho-Ho-Kus School,
-- Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Freehold Learning Center
-- Freehold, NJ
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Pike R-III Schools (Clopton)
-- Clarksville, MO
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
150 bags
-- Rhymes & Reasons Daycare
-- Elbow Lake, MN
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
500 bags
-- St. Michael School
-- Livonia, MI
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
100 bags
-- Pittsford Area School
-- Pittsford, MI
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Sheffield Elementary School
-- Turners Falls, MA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
800 bags
-- Nessacus Middle School
-- Dalton, MA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
800 bags
-- Hardinsburg Elementary
-- Harned, KY
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Moweaqua Elementary School
-- Moweaqua, IL
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Hales Franciscan High School
-- Chicago, IL
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
200 bags
-- Central Middle School
-- Thomasville, GA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Joseph Martin Elementary School
-- Hinesville, GA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
11,000 bags!
-- Community-wide event (25 schools, 23 grocery stores)
-- Jacksonville, FL
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
120 bags
-- R.R. Moton Elementary School
-- Miami, FL
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
--Central Florida Zoological Park (Seminole county)
-- Lake Monroe, FL
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
400 bags
-- Voluntown Elementary School,
Voluntown, CT
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
2,000 bags
-- Los Angeles Children’s Museum
-- L.A., CA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:
150 bags
-- 122nd Street School
-- Los Angeles, CA
Based on information received from the Paper Bag Council of the American Forest and Paper Association:

1,200 bags
-- Girl Scouts from 14 counties at "California Kaleidoscope" event
-- Stockton, CA


I'm just reporting in to tell you that our first Earth Day celebration was a big success. The children had a great time and the teachers were very complimentary. Several asked to borrow materials I had collected to enhance their lesson plans. Giant, our local grocer, distributed all the bags on Earth Day and said that the response from parents of Liberty-Valley students was overwelming. The event was covered by two of the local newspapers. The children were thrilled to get the materials you sent (the pogs were a big hit!). Thanks again for all your support. I hope to make this an annual event and hopefully I'll be contacting you next year.
Thanks again---Pam Kreis
Unknown location

Happy Earth Day, 1998!

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