Helping out Mother Earth
Academies junior offers lessons
in ecology to youngsters.
AMANDA PETRUCELLI
Tribune Correspondent
CULVER -- If humans could mine chocolate from the ground, planet Earth might be in trouble. That is, if a group of about 20 children "mining" chips from cookies is any indication.
It was an experiment, part of an Earth Day outreach at Culver Academies. To get all the chocolate, students had to destroy the cookies.
The goal was to show how erosion and destruction result from overmining.
And the group of kindergartners through third-graders happily devoured their "experiments" afterward, leaving nothing behind, just like a large-scale mining project might.Plymouth students were invited to Culver Academies on Earth Day as part of academy junior Claire VanLandingham's Girl Scout Gold Award requirements.
The award, similar to the Boy Scouts Eagle Award, has to benefit the community and be sustainable, Claire said.
"They hear so much about 'Turn off the water when you brush your teeth,' and 'Turn off the lights when you leave the room.' But they don't really know how that is helping the Earth," she said.
"So I wanted them to learn the basics."
Children were given take-home "passports" that were stamped at each of six stations that circulated at 10-minute intervals.They also received a toothbrush to remind them to turn off the tap while brushing their teeth to conserve water.
In one room, the kids separated trash into groups to show how long they take to decompose.
A diaper takes at least 500 years to decay, for example, said academy student Caroline Curry.
Curry said her father is a forester who inspired a lifelong love of the Earth.
"People litter all the time on campus. Like, they throw plastic bottles and aluminum cans," she said.She joined Green Life because she hoped to change this.
"I really want to increase the awareness. Really, exposing younger children is a really, really great way to help the next generation," she said.
After this activity, Plymouth student Trevor Grimmett said he learned "plastic bottles can make pollution and can take up to a thousand to a million years in the landfill."
In the next room, Academy senior Alex Harper put food coloring into water and showed how celery absorbs the "pollution."
Harper told the group, "This is the dirty polluted lake water. Nobody wants to drink it. Nobody wants to swim in it. Nobody wants to play in it and the animals certainly don't want to live there," she told the class.Annalise Barden -- who is age 6 1/2 -- enjoyed the Earth Day celebration.
"I learned that water (pollution) is when you turn water into gross water that you don't want to drink it," she said.
Claire VanLandingham, the event's creator, is a Plymouth resident and Academy junior.
She also is president of the campus ecology group, Green Life, which boasts about 30 members. Many of them volunteered to teach the children on Earth Day, wearing organic cotton T-shirts with the slogan "Green is Good."The group sold nearly 200 of the shirts last year as a school fundraiser, senior Ashley Harper, Alex's sister, said.
"Claire has really been the driving force behind all of this. She organized all of this and really has made this program worthwhile and a lot of fun," she said.
Sunday's affair was paid for with Claire's baby-sitting money -- about $80.
She said she targeted young children because they are more likely to take environmentalism seriously, if they learn about it early.
"When you learn when you are young, hopefully they'll grow up and recycle," Claire said. "They need to build the foundation."
Seth Grimmett, Mary McKinnis and Margaret McKinnis listen as Culver
Girls Academy senior Alex Harper explains how celery absorbs chemicals
-- or chemicals -- in the water.
Tribune Photos/AMANDA PETRUCELLI
Tribune Photos/AMANDA PETRUCELLI
Claire VanLandingham '08