IVY BILINGUAL SCHOOL
At the Ivy Ocean Express Campus, we make it a priority
to set aside a week out of the fall semester, as a
community, to focus on how we can appreciate and
protect the environment. It’s a pivotal opportunity to
empower them to feel capable and heard, and to really
encourage them to think about how they can use their
skill sets and share their ideas to make a difference in
both an educational and fun way. During this particular
week, which we refer to as “Environmental Week,” we
guide the children to make art crafts and even games
using a variety of recyclable materials. Some of the
materials we used this year included: bottle caps, tissue
paper rolls, boxes of all sizes, paper plates, buttons and
straws. The children and their parents contributed a
large number of recyclable materials, which we are still
using to make crafts. Our closet is still overflowing with
boxes, bottle caps, and tissue paper rolls!
In our classroom, we begin each circle time by talking
about the days of the week, weather conditions,
temperatures, and even the air quality. At the beginning
of the school year, we limited our AQI (Air Quality Index)
terms to “good,” “bad,” and “so-so.” We have now
been in school for nearly 4 months and the children
themselves have decided that we needed to add “very
good” and “very bad” when discussing the air quality. It
only recently occurred to me that high air quality levels
are a strong indicator that they cannot go outside to
play, and more often than not they are limited to the
classroom. They are at times circumscribed by their
environment, so let us not restrict them in what they
have to share with us.
At the beginning of “Environmental Week” we talked about air and
water pollution. I asked them, “Why do you think the air and some
of our water sources are so bad?” I was expecting them to shrug
their shoulders and reply with an, “I don’t know.” I was taken aback
when the first child to raise his hand started talking about how cars
contributed to the air pollution. Once he spoke up, the other children
started to talk about factories, overpopulated cities, littering, and
contributed. In that moment, I stood corrected. Playing outside
was, and is, so dear to these 4-year-old boys and girls that they had
evidently thought about the reasons as to why they are to remain
inside when the air quality is poor. I had a thought come to mind:
even when we are affected by poor environmental conditions, we are
simultaneously surrounded by children whose ideas are inexhaustible.
We spent the next couple of days talking about the many steps we can
take to recognize, reverse, and reduce air and water pollution. As we
were discussing air pollution and the three R’s of the environment -
reduce, reuse, and recycle - one of the children said, “If we can hurt
our environment, we can also help it.”
Ivy Schools Fall/Winter Edition 2018