PTO Today

Earth Day is around the corner and it’s a wonderful time to run a program or hold an event that celebrates the earth and really inspires families.

Many parent groups run cleanup or recycling programs at their schools on Earth Day (April 22) to help kids understand the message of taking care of our planet and to give families tips for living a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

But Earth Day lends itself to a variety of different programs, too. We have lots of ideas on our site, from fashion shows featuring clothing made of recycled materials to gardening projects. You can find more information on these events here.

Or, you could download our free Go Green Night planning kit and plan something fun for next month at your school. Our Go Green Night Kit has everything you need to organize and run an event that focuses on protecting the environment and saving energy. In addition to a step-by-step planning guide, promotional flyer, poster, and banner, the kit has kid-friendly activities, including some inspired by the movie EPIC, a three-dimensional animated adventure scheduled for release in May.

Curious about what sort of activities are in the kit? Check out one of our 9 fun activities, How Big Is Your Carbon Footprint..
This Carbon Footprint activity provides information about what a carbon footprint is and it helps kids learn about it with a fun coloring activity.

Also, your school will have a chance to win a free screening of the movie EPIC before it is in theaters. Learn more about how to enter the EPIC Go Green Night Sweepstakes in your free planning kit! Order yours now!

A California PTO is pushing a go-green project while a PTO in Nebraska gets ready for the demolition of its 73-year-old school. A school parent group in Florida adds a Hula-Hoop contest to its spring carnival while another California group of parent volunteers teaches second graders about fractions.

PTO advocating a green transformation:The PTO of the Truckee Elementary School in Truckee, Calif., is helping the school tackle a go-green project that will be sponsored in part by the Shane McConkey Foundation. Initially, the school will set up a Go Green team of older students and provide instructions to them on environmental issues. They, in turn, will become mentors for the younger students. The PTO has set up a dedicated website to help get out information about this project.

Parent involvement helping to boost test scores:At Orchard Elementary School in Modesto, Calif., a group of parents is working in the classrooms of second grade students to assist in math lessons, including multiplication, division and fractions. The school reported last year’s test scores showed an improvement over the previous year’s results and it believes this is in part because of parent help. As there are up to 32 students in a class, the school said it needs parent helpers to reach all students.

Hula Hoops and Cake Walk Add Sizzle: The Ponte Vedra Palm Valley/Rawlings Elementary School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., gave its Spring Carnival a boost recently by added a Hula-Hoop contest and a cake walk. These new activities, along with 12 bounce houses and other games, apparently did the trick. The carnival raised about $40,000. Parents, along with middle and high school student volunteers, help run the event.

Photo Collection Helps Preserve School History: The PTO at Linden Elementary School in Freemont, Neb., was concerned that a key piece of the school’s history would be lost when the original school building, erected in 1939, is torn down this summer. So, volunteers went on a hunt for photos and apparently uncovered a treasure trove at the local library. The old photos and clippings will be duplicated for this year’s school yearbook.

Once again, no PTO slackers in our midst!

Hope you can borrow some of these ideas to help boost your own group! Have a great weekend!

The weekend is here and I have gardening on the mind! It’s so refreshing to scan the recent parent group news and see so many articles about schools taking on gardening projects. In general, we are seeing a trend of parent groups taking a more active role in green school initiatives. This week’s article round-up speaks to the benefits of school gardens:

• Education grows with learning garden.
• Students learn life lessons through gardening.
• Kids learn about the importance of nutrition and gardening sustainability.
• Constructing a courtyard creates various sensory activities for the kids.

So, are you inspired? Is your PTO or PTA involved in a garden project? We’d love to hear about it.

If you are looking for other ways to make your school more green, check out these articles and tools:

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/825-how-ptos-are-going-green

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/689-fun-and-eco-games

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/826-greening-our-parent-group

http://www.ptotoday.com/sfn/SFN_gogreen_leader.php

Happy weekend and happy gardening!

With Earth Day coming up this Friday (April 22), the focus is on environmental awareness. There are lots of things your PTO or PTA can do to help students think more about the environment and to make your school more green. Some of my favorite ideas:

Walk to School Day: Have volunteer chaperones meet groups of children at predetermined spots, then walk together to school. It’s healthy, it’s fun, and it cuts down on traffic.

No-Waste Lunch Week: See if you can keep the trash barrels empty by recycling, composting, and reusing.

Go Green Night: Hold a family night that teaches kids about energy conservation, recycling, and more. Our free Go Green Night kit has lots of fun and informative activities.

Here are a few other links from ptotoday.com with green ideas:

• One group’s innovative green programs
• Making your PTO green
• More on making your school green

Best wishes and happy Earth Day!

Earth Day, April 22, is a great time to involve students in projects that teach them about the three R’s—reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Go Outside
Hold a cleanup day. Give teams of students and parents assignments, such as planting flowers or picking up trash. Send a picture of the cleanup crew to the local newspaper.

Challenge Kids
If your school’s classrooms don’t already have paper recycling bins, purchase containers for this purpose. Ask teachers and students to collect recycled paper for a week, then weigh the containers to see which class saved the most paper from the landfill. Provide an eco-friendly prize.

Raise Some Green
Make an extra push in April for your profit-earning recycling programs. Gather all the aluminum cans, ink cartridges, and used cell phones that you can. Be sure to let families know how many items were recycled and how much money the school earned.

Does your parent group have anything planned for Earth Day? If not, think about borrowing one of these great ideas.

Eco-Fashion Show

Students modeled clothing they created from recycled materials at an environmental assembly organized by the PTA at Samuel Staples Elementary in Easton, Conn., for Earth Day 2010. The PTA’s Green Task Force planned the event, which included a student play about taking care of the earth.

Beach Cleanup

Blue Point (N.Y.) Elementary students spent a day at the shore with their families in September, but they were too busy picking up trash to lie on the sand. The PTA-sponsored cleanup, which took place at a local beach, was tied to the International Coastal Cleanup initiative. The group picked up 170 pounds of trash, including 1,373 cigarette butts and 215 bottles and cans.

Hope you all had a happy St. Patrick’s Day! I had fun reading articles about the various ways that schools and parent groups showed their green this week. Here are my top picks for St. Patrick’s Day school celebrations in the news:

• This PTA showed their school and irish spirit by hosting a breakfast with a Leprechaun. Is the boy in the photo the most adorable Leprechaun you’ve ever seen, or what? Actually he’s the only one I’ve seen, but he’s still pretty cute!
• Kudos this parent group for saying thanks to their teachers with a bit of an irish flair.  What a fun day to do a teacher appreciation event!
• Love that this school celebrated  St. Patty’s Day by throwing a Go Green Day for their whole school.  If your school would like to host a Go Green Night, check out this free kit.
• In keeping with a true irish tradition, this PTA invited parents to join them for a pint of Guinness!

Cheers! Have a great weekend.

Here are the highlights of the featured articles for this week. Hope you’ll find something that sparks an idea– big or small– for an upcoming event or program.

• Batter up! This PTO has about 2,500 people attend their pancake breakfast. Wow. That’s a whole lot of pancakes. More importantly, that’s whole lot of school and community spirit!
• Now here’s an idea: offer a $5,000 jack pot to get parents to come to your fundraiser. The only catch is that event tickets are $100 per couple. A night out with other parents and a chance at $5k — sounds worth it to me.
• Speaking of prizes, this school is enticing parents of  freshman to come to their information night with a free chili dinner and a chance to win one of four Kindles. Nice.
• We always say that family nights are a terrific way to build community at your school. This PTO has the right idea… they are running a “Minute to Win It”  family challenge, followed by a family movie night.  Sounds like a fun night!
• Like the twist that this PTO put on their school auction:  the auction items are re-gifts.  Re-use, recycle and raise money for the school. Genius.
• Kudos to this school for hosting an environmental fair before green was hip! Really like that more 120 kids are involved in their 15th annual school environmental fair.

Don’t forget to let us know if your PTO or PTA event gets press! We’d love to include your story in our round-ups. Email me at lgundlach@ptotoday.com.

No shortage of inspiration in this week’s news.  Here are my take-aways from this collection of articles:

• Not only is a jog-a-thon a great fundraiser but it’s also a terrific way to encourage families to get moving and make healthy choices.
• Family Fun days are a excellent way to build community while showing parents how to make learning more fun.
• Never, ever give up. This parent group’s turn around story offers hope for groups with low involvement.
• Sometimes some of the most basic things require a parent group’s attention… in this case, a PTO rallied support for a walk-to-school program.
• Parent groups have an opportunity to influence their community in their green living habits. Kudos to this PTO for challenging families to go “garbage free.”
• Think beyond fundraising- think pink! This PTA organized a pink day to highlight breast cancer awareness.
• Always love coming across articles about events that were inspired by our PTO Today Magazine… this giant hay maze sounds like a fun, fall event!

Hope you found something to inspire you. Have a fabulous weekend. Don’t forget to send me a link to any articles about your parent group!

As school districts have tightened their budgets, PTOs have pitched in to landscape school grounds and make improvements to buildings during family workdays. Borrow ideas from these parent groups that put their own spin on events to work for their school communities.

All-Ages Project
The Gullett Elementary PTA in Austin, Texas, renovated the school courtyard to create a butterfly garden and a picnic area. Students and parents joined in on community workdays to move old fencing and prep the area for construction of a stone walkway in the shape of a snake. Kids too young for that work made birdhouses out of recycled milk cartons. After construction, students painted stripes on the snaking path.

Cutting Costs
To save money on a landscaping project, the Andrew Cooke Magnet School PTO called on home gardeners to bring cuttings from perennials to a workday at the Waukegan, Ill., school. More than 200 students and parents turned out to plant gardens and paint hopscotch squares, planters, and picnic benches.

Online Appeal
To find help for a summer workday, the Chelsea (Ala.) Middle School PTO went to where students are: Facebook. The PTO put up a day-before notice with a particular request for high schoolers needing community service hours.