Pumpkin alert II

 ORANGE is the new “Green” for Halloween

And orange it was:
BCE collected 1 trailer and 1 pick up truck full of pumpkins on Friday, November 2nd, 2012.
This is BCE's second year in collecting pumpkins for local farmers.

A BIG THANK YOU to all of BCE students, teachers, staff, BCE Dad's club and parents to donate their time, pick up trucks, trailer and Halloween pumpkins.
Supporting our local farmers is very important in this economy and current drought!

We drove the pumpkins out to Green Gates Farm (they are sharing BCE pumpkins with the McGeary Farm).

Green Gates Farm:

* Unloading pumpkins:

* Happy pigs:

 * Giving pumpkins to two more pigs (never seen pigs THIS big!!!):

 * Pumpkins on compost pile:

(Chickens and the goat also got some pumpkins and were munching away).
For BCE students it was a great learning experience!
Reuse of pumpkins, visiting a local farm, being appreciated by the local farmers!

We are hoping for an even bigger pumpkin event next year!



 ORANGE is the new “green” for Halloween at BCE

DON’T SCARE THE EARTH ON HALLOWEEN!

This FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2^th the Barton Creek Elementary School will be collecting carved and uncarved pumpkins to share with nearby pig and cattle farms.

Parent and student volunteers will be collecting your pumpkins during morning “Drop- Off” OR if you prefer, place your pumpkins along the grassy area at the back of the big parking lot anytime that same day. The pumpkins will leave BCE after school.

Not only will we be making quite a few cows and pigs happy with a pumpkin feast, our Earth will thank you as well for being ORANGE (The new “green” for Halloween)! 

Did You Know?
"About 1.1 billion pounds of pumpkin end up in our landfills after Halloween. Not only do these pumpkins take up space, they emit methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide." [1]

 “If just 10 percent of all pumpkins sold this year were composted instead of being thrown out with the garbage, 100 million pounds of waste could be kept from the nation's landfills annually. The effect of this level of waste reduction would be as though nearly 42,000 U.S. households stopped producing garbage altogether.” [2]

[1] http://www.opportunitygreen.com

[2] www.blueegg.com/answer/Compost-Your-Jack-O-Lantern.html

Featured: Ms Bowerman's 2nd grade class: Bottle Caps!!!

One innovative teacher, 

22 creative students, 

764 collected bottle caps: 

an awesome example of REUSE!!! 

Ms Bowerman's 2nd grade class collected 764 bottle caps.
These bottle caps were turned into math and spelling games for K through 2nd grade classrooms.

The students first counted the bottle caps:

4 student groups were formed.
These groups brainstormed on what game to make, for which grade level, and how many bottle caps they needed for the game.

Still thinking...

One group wrote the ABC on the bottle caps, for this game the player needs to arrange the bottle caps in alphabetical order (for Kindergarten class):

This group made a spelling game for 1st grade:

Another group created a math game, learning how to count money, for 2nd graders:

Finally writing down directions:

Games were delivered to classrooms. Happy learning! Great REUSE!

First Lunch Trash weigh out!

The Green Committee weighed trash in the cafeteria today, October 2nd.

Our BCE students produced a very sad 168 lbs of trash:
this is the trash from just 1 lunch!!!

168 lbs x 5 days = 840 lbs per week
840 lbs x 36 school weeks =      30,240 lbs     per school year!!!
And yes, that number is in red because it is very alarming, don't you think?

How you can help?
* talk to your student about making healthy eating choices: we compost on Fridays but all other days all the leftover fruit and veggies will go into trash!
* if you pack lunch for your student: use a reusable lunch box,
communicate with your child on what he would like to eat for lunch,
encourage your child to eat his/her lunch and also
if she/he cannot finish his whole lunch, it is fine to take the rest back home (afternoon snack time?)


The Green Committee will weigh trash again in November after
HEB Westlake will provide a  
Healthy Eating education in all our classrooms.
We are very hopeful that students will reduce their trash afterwards
= eat more healthy food during lunch.
Stay tuned for more info on this awesome event!!!

Composting Fridays

Composting Fridays are back!!!

This school year, 2nd grade is in charge.
They have the last lunch period and hence get to compost.

4 students per Friday get to participate.
We weigh the compost before putting it into the compost tumbler ( = hands on math!!!)
On Friday, September 28th, we had 44 lbs of compost!!!

BIG Thank You to our Booster club to sponsor a new compost tumbler!
The students had a lot of fun with it: rotating the tumbler to get the compost well mixed.
With this tumbler we'll have compost in no time!

Our compost from last school year is ready for gardening.

4th Grade: Paper Recycling

A big Thank You to Mrs Alkire's students
who took the extra time today to weigh how much paper BCE recycles per week.

They collected 93 lbs of paper and recycled that.

Estimate:
90 lbs of paper every Friday x 35 Fridays per school year = 3,150 lbs
of paper per school year.

That's quite A LOT of paper BCE saves from going into trash!
Way to go!!!

Mrs Stover and some of her 4th grade students recycling paper.

BCE bans helium balloons!

 

A HELIUM balloon will cost $100…

…by next year and won’t exist anymore by 2015!!!

The US will liquidate its

Federal helium reserve by 2015.

Curious why you won’t see HELIUM balloons

at BCE anymore?

Booster Club wants to save our Earth’s precious helium.

Ever had an MRI or know of someone who did? 
No Helium = No more MRIs.

What YOU can do?

Stop buying helium balloons!!!

Thanks for supporting our Earth.

BCBC Green Committee

...and this is definitely NOT a joke.

Here is a pretty good sum up of the situation:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1696371/Global-helium-shortage-could-sink-clowns-and-super 

http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN12/wn051812.html

a Wonderful Greener 2011/2012 School year at BCE