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Summary: 12/7 Meeting and Spring Project



On Friday, 12/7, we spent the afternoon teaching the kids about composting and then revealed our exciting spring 2019 project:  launching composting during snack-time at Mason-Rice.   With Principal Bultema's support, the Green Team Kids will help lead composting at Mason-Rice starting next March!

As a quick background: Mason-Rice does not currently compost during snack or lunch.  This is probably not surprising, since - as Newton residents would know - the City of Newton currently does not provide for compost pickup.  Accordingly, Mason-Rice students' food scraps must be thrown into the trash.  However, over the years, a couple of elementary schools in Newton (Underwood and Peirce) have started to compost on their own campuses thanks to the initiative of environmentally-minded and motivated individuals at the respective schools (typically a staff member).  This fall, the City of Newton has also launched compost pick-up at its newest elementary schools -- Zervas and Angier. Since the current city budget is limited to pick-up at these two new schools, we decided that this is a perfect opportunity for the Green Team Kids to take action at Mason-Rice.

As a first step, we worked with the kids to learn as much as we could about composting.   We started out with a fun online sorting game from the National Geographic website, and then moved on to learning the fundamentals of composting.

To internalize these concepts, we played a fun "Compost" card game in groups.




To give the students some more context and exposure to the kinds of exciting new "green" technologies that exist today, we also watched a video about anaerobic digester facilities, including at the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant.  If you would like, feel free to take a look at our presentation slides and videos here.


We look forward to seeing everyone on 12/14 for our "Recycled Gift Exchange"!

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