Conserve: Reduce - Reuse - Recycle!
- Every student in grades first through fifth participate in our school wide recycling. Each class brings their own recycling bin to science lab each week. Students also collect cafeteria cans for recycling.
- Students collect a variety of items, that are not normally recyclable, for Terra Cycle. Terra Cycle pays the school one penny for every item collected. Students can win prizes for bringing in full bags of Terra Cycle. The items that we collect change based on the company’s needs. Currently we collect cereal bags, personal care packaging, chips bags, and toothpaste tubes. Since the opening of the school in 2011 we received well over $ 2,500.
- Students save all of their broken crayons and bring them to science lab. Students peel crayons when they have time. The crayons are melted and poured into molds. The “new” crayons are sold to students and the money is used to purchase wild bird seed, feeders and other supplies for our wildlife and vegetable gardens.
- Students propagate house plants that they may take home through cuttings and separation. The students are encouraged to find discarded items to use as creative planters to take their plants home.
- Catawba trail has participated in the Trex Plastic Bag Challenge for the last five years. Our school has won the contest for our division in South Carolina every time and received a Trex bench every year. This year we collected nearly 2,000 pounds of plastic bags
- Mint Vinegar Cleaner bottled by our 5th Graders.
- We have purchased drones fore the students to use. Before they can use them they are learning about many of the environmental and agriculture applications of drones as well as retail, film and military.
- All food waste on Monday and Tuesday is collected and picked up by a pig farmer. All whole apples go to a horse stable. Some fruits and vegetables are used science lab animals and chickens. The bags from carrots are reused as crayon shopping bags.
- Fifth grade students made solar oven from pizza boxes and were able to eat samores they cooked.
- Fourth and fifth grade students also cut plastic bags into strips or Plarn. Staff strings the strips together to create balls of plarn which are they given to Jane Hiller from Sunoco recycling to be turned into bed rolls. We donated about 20, one pound balls of plarn. Plarning is a favorite rainy day activity for garden club.
- Art - Students made paper mache pizzas out of recycled newspaper and recycled newspaper art.
Protect! Air, Water and Litter Prevention
- We recruited parents to pick up and bring coffee grounds from Starbucks to the composters. We are getting about 25-50 ponds a month.
- Students built and maintain a garden pond.
- Fourth grade students learn about aquatic environments, global warming, erosion, water quality, indicator species, invasive species, water purification and treatment plants and water conservation through the raising of rainbow trout. Kindergarten students learn about life cycles and water quality from our Trout in the Classroom Project.
- Students test bodies of water throughout our state, with the results being reported on World Water Monitoring day.
- All grade levels participate in a school grounds litter pick-up during Earth Day Week. Students also pick up trash during the year as needed.
- Three 55 gallon rain barrels collect runoff from the roof above the science lab. The water is used by the students to water plants and wash hands.
- This year we began our Air Quality Project. All students were educated about air quality and the air quality flag monitoring system. A kid friendly flag holder was designed to hold the air quality flags. Students check the web site each moring and put up the appropraite flag and take it down at the end of the day. Students canvassed the car rider line getting parents to sign pledge cards promising to reduce their idling habits. and carried banners asking everyone to make CTE idle free. Fourth grade students created anti-idling buttons to pass out to cars in the car rider line and in the community.
- Fifth grade students engaged in a " Plant in Every Classroom" project. Students propagated Peace Lily's, Snake Root, Christmas Cactus and other plants and potted them The plants were then placed in every classroom that did not contain a plant. Teachers could chose a loaner plant, or a keeper plant if they supplied their own pot.
Restore!
- Our school has one vermicomposter and a set of three beautiful, wooden composters with removable fronts. Perfect for a years worth of compost. We collect two five gallon bucket of leftover fruits and vegetables to put in the composters daily. The soil from the composters and leachate are used to enrich our garden soil.
- All students in third through fifth grade learn about erosion and runoff (polluted or not) by using a set of flumes. The flume lab consists of six, 8 foot open PVC tubes that are packed with a variety of soils which depict different scenarios that humans can create in the environment. Students then run water down the tubes measuring the speed of the water and the amount of erosion that occurs.
- The woods of the school grounds had been used a dumping ground for many years. After two Eagle Scout projects it is now a functional nature trail complete with a journaling bench around our treasured Sycamore tree. There is still a mound of trash that we are slowly covering with mulch and sticks. Trash continually comes up out of the ground and is cleaned up a couple of times a year by students.
- Students designed and built a wildlife garden complete with a fish pond surrounded by our vegetable garden. Students continue to maintain the pond, wildlife garden, bird feeder, strawberry beds, blueberry patch and pecan grove. The Students grow vegetable plants from seed for the school's garden and to take home to their own gardens. year students dug up an area for cover crops, primarily cow peas.
- In addition to maintaining our own blue bird trail, students built 20 bluebird houses from kits purchased from Heywood School with green funds. They donated 11 of these kits to the community and sold 10 at the Soda City Earth Day Celebration.
- Students in grades K-5th entered the Richland County Soil and Water Conservation District's Arbor Day contest. We had 19 proud winners.
- Two students researched bats and entered the ReThink Contest.
- We had 6 winners in the Congaree National Park Swamp Art Contest.
- Students in k-5th entered the RCSWCD's Conservation Poster Contest " Watersheds, Our Water, Our Home. We submitted 40 entries and had 8 winners.
- We participated in the Litter Trashes Everyone Contest."
- Students are maintaining the milkweed garden, the pesticide free milkweed was harvested to feed monarch caterpillars purchased from Monarch Watch. We also harvested seed from our milkweed. Our Milkweed seed harvest was divided as follows: some were donated to Monarch Watch, some germinated to be sold and some seeds were sold as well. **UPDATE** 18 Monarch butterflies were just released into the milkweed garden.
- 3rd through 5th Grade students researched soils and entered the Richland County Soil and Water Conservation District's Healthy Soils Are Full Of Life poster contest.
- 4th Grade Quest students build and utilized a hydroponics system to grow plant and used the leftover water to water our plants school wide.
- Salad in a Bucket: 380 students grew salad gardens in one gallon buckets that they could take home to promote healthy eating, as part of a grant obtained by Dr. Marturano form the Clemson Children's Garden. The same grant enable Mr. Grogdon, also from the Clemson Children's Garden, to install a new set of raised garden beds for student use.