Mrs. McGowan's First Grade     Spring Lake, NJ

Our study about Earth Day began by reading springtime books and those with environmental themes.  A favorite again this year was Prince William by Gloria Rand, a story about the oil spill in Prince William Sound.   We also enjoyed the wonderful pictures in Where the River Begins  and Water Dance by Thomas Locker. 

A favorite story was A River Ran Wild , an Environmental History by Lynne Cherry.  This book shows how a beautiful New England river became polluted over time due to human carelessness.  It changed once again into a clean, safe waterway thanks to new laws and hard work by people who cared about the environment.  These people made a difference!  We can do the same.  We all want the earth to be clean and safe for children, grownups, and all living things now and in the future.

Our Project

We wrote postcards to the first graders who will be in our classroom twenty years from now.  We wanted them to know how we are trying to protect our environment and save resources by doing simple things that "make a difference."

First we selected something each of us could do that would help the earth.  We wrote and illustrated our choices on triangular paper representing the 3 "Rs": recycle, reuse, reduce.  Here are two written by Jessica and Andy:        
 

Click on the thumbnails to see larger image

Next we typed our selections using a template in WORD, a word processing program, copied and pasted an image as a stamp, and added an illustration done in PAINT.  We "navigated" to another webpage made by Mrs. M which had several images for us to choose from for the stamps.  We have these postcards and illustrations hanging in our classroom now.

Student Work

We're showing our illustrations in thumbnail size as the stamps (click on the image for a larger version and use your back button to return here).

Samantha	Cecelia	Leigh Ann	Andy
Brendan	Samuel	Noah	Emma
Leah	Alec	Erin	Lydia
Jessica		Jonathan

Beautiful Spring, Beautiful Earth Project

For the special collaborative project hosted by Susan Silverman and Linda Brandon, Beautiful Spring, Beautiful Earth, we submitted our postcards showing the text students typed in WORD and our PAINT images.  The focus of Susan & Linda's project is to enrich a unit of study and promote student learning while engaged in instructional technology.  You must visit - too good to miss!

A River Ran Wild: Summary

Also, some students made illustrations in PAINT to summarize A River Ran Wild :

Erin	Leah	Emma
For many years the river was clean and ran fast.  People dumped garbage and factory waste which polluted the water.  It moved slowly, smelled bad, and the fish died.  Finally some people helped get new laws to stop the pollution and they cleaned up the river.

Earth Day Readers Theater

A culminating activity this year was to do an Earth Day Readers Theater presentation for the 2nd and 4th grade classes.  Everyone read their part with fluency and expression!  You can read and print the script too:

Earth Day Readers Theater Script

For other Earth Day ideas, books, and resources,  please visit

Earth Day from Marci McGowan
and
Beautiful Spring, Beautiful Earth:
Project Resources & Activities
 

Mrs. McGowan's First Grade       Our Colorful Spring Project
© 2005 - Marci McGowan