Earth Month

by EcoReporters — Pictou Landing First Nation School, Pictou Landing, NS

May 2011 — Earth Day is so important to Pictou Landing First Nation School that we had an EARTH MONTH! For the month of April the Eco-Kids came up with a different theme for each week:

Each class picked a theme and wrote speeches to the community about their topic. In their speeches they gave community members tips and told them the importance of their topic. Some of the speeches were read at our Earth Month Celebration.

Cleaning up around the community.

During the month we took part of the Pictou County Go Clean Get Green Project and went out and cleaned our community ditches and businesses afterschool. Each day we helped clean up we got to put our name in for a draw for a BIKE. We cleaned the Band Office, Health Center, School Yards and Elders yards and a couple of blocks in the community. It made me feel good when I helped clean elders yards. The Bike was donated by Michelin Tire and Destiny Francis won the bike, it was well deserved as Destiny showed up everyday to clean the community.

We had presentations too, one that I liked was done by the Dalhousie University students. They taught us about the life cycle and how animals cannot survive on filthy water and land.

A truck load of litter we collected in one ditch.

Another good presentation was by Project Wet and Native Waters. The lady did cool activities with us to teach us about water conservation. Lastly was a presentation on Waste Management. We are getting good at our school with recycling properly and had a presentation for the community members.

Our school hosted the Regional Science Fair this year and we are proud to say that we were the only school that made it mandatory to do “environmental science fair projects.” It was certainly recognized as our school did very well in the winners circle.

For our community we had a Metal Depot and Community Clean-Up Drop Off. This event on Earth Day was a big success and we made $123 in metal to help pay for our Earth Month Celebration. We also had 8 truck loads of litter dropped off to the Pictou County Go Clean Get Green!

Tile painting

The best thing that happened I would say the Earth Month celebration because the whole community came together. There were fun activities for the kids that included face painting, tile painting (earthly pictures), planting sunflowers, making recycled costumes or sculptures and having a barbecue and cake. At a table there were pledges for the kids, community members and elders to sign. We had over 60 people pledge to “Reduce, Reuse & Recycle.” I really liked getting a flower painted on my face. At the end of the celebration there were draws for the community: Most Improved Yard Contest and Clean Yard Contest. The elders went around the whole community and out in the names of all the people who have clean yards. The elders said they were pleased to see such a great job the community did and entered almost every community member.

Some people probably think it is not an important job to be an eco-kid but it is important to be an Eco-Kid and having the job of being eco-reporters was very special to us. We do good things for Mother Earth and our community. We made newsletters for the community to help them with recycling, littering and giving them important facts. “I like being an eco-kid because we have a lot of fun and we help the environment plus it’s important because we need more groups, more people to help the environment.”

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