Summary: 1/31 Climate Change Walk

Thanks to twenty incredibly energetic and engaged Mason-Rice students (ranging from 1st to 5th grade), we successfully launched this year's Mason-Rice Green Team Kids this past Friday afternoon! Given the unusually warm January we've experienced and the urgency of our climate crisis, it seemed appropriate to (re-)introduce the topic of climate change at our session and empower our students to help raise awareness of the issue within our community (while enjoying an outdoor walk on a warm Friday afternoon in January).

After spending some time in the classroom discussing climate change and the story of Greta Thunberg, the students had a chance to hear from Kate, a Newton South high school student -- one of our "own" youth here in Newton -- who cares deeply about our environment and is taking action to help address climate change.

Once we wrapped up the classroom portion, we headed off (20 kids and 6 grown-ups!) to Newton Centre. If they chose to do so, students carried customized signs that they were given an opportunity to create in the classroom. The students were creative and came up with quite a unique assortment of signs:

And then we were off! Thankfully, the kids received a TON of support from people in the community (e.g. car honking, thumbs up, smiles), which they seemed to enjoy very much.

Thanks everyone! Stay tuned for next month's session on "Recycling and Composting"!

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Our last meeting!

On June 7, we Green Team coordinators were happily surprised and showered with beautiful flowers, cards and gifts from our Green Team Kids and their parents. Were were thrilled to hear how much the students enjoyed the programming over the year, and we thank the parents for their ongoing support and generosity! To cap off a great year and to enjoy the beautiful summer afternoon, we enjoyed a scavenger hunt outdoors that covered numerous topics we've discussed over the course of the year followed by frozen treats, a short presentation by Kate and Audrey about eating vegan (this was a topic we were going to cover in an earlier session, when we went to visit the Mayor instead!), and then a photo slideshow of the year. Thanks everyone for an amazing year, and have a great summer!

Our Kickoff Meeting (10/26/2018)

On the afternoon of October 26th, we launched our first Mason-Rice Green Team Kids meeting for the year. We had approximately fourteen 3rd and 4th graders with a mix of knowledge and interest in environmental issues and actions they can take to help protect our planet. As a group, we discussed what they would like to do as members of Green Team Kids (the most popular response was "making posters" to raise awareness, which we will be doing at the next meeting). Then we launched into our first substantive topic: TRASH. Below is a copy of some of the slides and videos from our presentation. October 26 Presentation Slides For those who would like to learn more about how the City of Newton manages its trash and recycling, please check out the "Where Does My Trash and Recycling Go?" section on the City's website .

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 s...

Mason-Rice Green Team Kids!

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