Photos From Earth Hour Day

Clairlea celebrated Earth Hour the whole day. Here are some photos documenting this beautiful day that kept power on the back burner, so to speak.

Mr. Knierim was all smiles before turning off the staff room photocopiers for the day. Teachers and staff managed to make it through an instructional day without worksheets while children rejoiced and trees raised their branches in praise.
These babies are usually treated like beloved friends. Today, they sat idle, like spurned lovers.
Not the set of a horror film, but the hallway on the second floor of Clairlea. We kept the hallway lights off all day. Only emergency lights were kept on. The hallways were a lot brighter near the windows as you'll see in the photos below.
Room 204 did a few green activities today. One such activity involved rummaging through blue boxes to find random texts that would be used to create "found" poems.
From trash to treasure, students got busy and created some highly entertaining and occasionally mysterious poems.
Plundered Forest Valley trip form becomes a curious poem. While the poem below has something to do with the word "March."

Thanks to students, staff, and families for making this day a green success.

Earth Hour & Last Child in the Woods

This Friday, Clairlea will be participating in Earth Hour. During the afternoon, staff and students will be asked to "power off." This means lights, computers and all other electrically powered contraptions will be turned off as a symbolic gesture. We can survive without electricity for a little while. I'm also hoping that this Friday we can turn off the photocopiers in the staff room and the upstairs resource room all day. We can do it!

When I was a child, I'd spend hours outside playing at the local parks, climbing trees and riding my bike around our neighbourhood. We were lucky enough to have a cottage where I learned how to fish and garden with my dad. I also learned not to fear nature. As a teenager, we lived on a street opposite the Scarborough Bluffs. I used to wander over to the grounds of the Guild Inn and write poetry and take pictures of flowers and trees. Nature was my greatest influence and it certainly brought out a creative side - much to my own surprise.

Several teachers at Clairlea have been inspired by Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods. Louv makes a very strong case that today's children are not spending nearly enough time outdoors as they should be. Here is a blurb from the back of the book: "This new edition updates the growing body of evidence linking the lack of nature in children's lives and the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression." Louve talks about how children today are being raised as "container kids," shuttled back and forth in cars from one indoor space to another, spending too much time parked in front of the TV or computer and not enough free range time exploring the world outside.

I am reading this book right now and as a parent and teacher, it's already forcing me to make changes in the way I spend time with our young son as well as my class at Clairlea. We will definitely be spending more time learning in outdoor classroom over the next few months. To read more about this book visit http://richardlouv.com/last-child-woods I may be including some of Louv's discussion points on upcoming posts.

Stay fresh and green,

Erin Hawkins