Baby goats, potted plants and craft butterflies — a summary of the booths that were present during SCVi Charter School’s second annual Earth Day Celebration on Friday.
With the help of the charter school’s upperclassmen, elementary students could learn more about the Earth, while participating in engaging activities.
“This is a joint effort between our parent organization and our high school activities students, and it is designed to have our students rotating through different stations,” said SCVi Director Chad Powell. “Each one is an activity that reinforces some idea of conservation, recycling, Earth, these sort of things.”
According to Powell, the Scarlet Foundation, a “registered nonprofit organization whose sole purpose is to support SCVi and learners through fundraising and community-building activities,” according to its website, encouraged the school to participate in Earth Day, resulting in a newfound tradition that is now in its second year.
“We have lots of parent helpers, and it’s a schoolwide program with our high school students helping the adults and staff do this for the little kids,” Powell said.
Parents such as Lindsey Kahn, parent volunteer coordinator for the Scarlet Foundation, as well as Jessica Harrison, SCVi math teacher and director of activities, coordinated efforts for over two months to ensure the success of the event.
“Our student council, our school ambassadors got together and wanted to do something for the school to celebrate Earth Day — my high schoolers specifically love being able to do things for the little kids,” Harrison said. “We brainstormed a bunch of activities about ideas we wanted to share with the kids; they broke into groups, picked their topic and planned it.”
This year, the event expanded to include the SCVi Middle School Student Council’s booth, where students could make recycled butterfly art from cardboard tubes.
In addition, activities for students included a photo booth with seniors Brooke Crane, 17 and Eva Hutson, 17, who were dressed as a satyr and mushroom, respectively, and made their costumes themselves.
“We have a table where they are making suncatchers out of water bottles, our ‘Earth Day Garden,’ where they’re putting handprints on a banner, goats [to discuss] natural landscaping and fire prevention, and a table dedicated to the water cycle,” Harrison said. “We have a table on oil spills and pollution and practicing oil spill cleanup, a table on jobs in the field, new plant friends they can take home and a table on pollinators and how bees are important for our environment.”
SCVi senior Donavon Robinson, 17, who is the advisory council president, monitored the “Earth Day Garden” to create art for the students and staff of the school to later enjoy in the hallway.
“The booth that I run is this nice little portrait where they’ll put their hands in paints and then put it on the wall, so that it forms a flower,” Robinson said. “This is something that we try to do regularly each year. Last year, we did trees, so I thought this was going to be a nice way for them to be creative and have space to move around and be artistic.”
Among the students’ fan favorites were 2-month-old goats Dustry and Frankie, who were fed hay and brought by senior Madi Fanning, 17.
“[Goats are] great for landscaping, so I figured I would bring them for Earth Day,” Fanning said. “I have been raising farm animals my whole life, and I like the bond that you build with the animals.”
