Help 75 Students Become Earth Keepers

Our Spring session of Earth Keepers is underway! This session, your continued support has provided enough scholarships for four children to join our group. We are thrilled that our program family has expanded to 18 children who are excited about nature, all because of you!

Working with this program has shown me the true value of hands-on learning. Touching, holding, and getting right in the midst of nature has made it real and important for our Earth Keepers in a way that elementary science classes have not. Over the past few months, Earth Keepers like Ahmad, Cameron, and Jeffrey have made breakthroughs in their understanding of soil, food webs, and animals through hands-on exploration.

During a lesson about soil, the Earth Keepers were confused when we asked them what soil was. “It’s just dirt,” said Cameron, one of the newest members of the group. When Cameron got the chance to see, smell, and touch five different soil samples from around his school, however, his attitude changed. He loved feeling the gritty texture of the sandy soils and compared it to squishy samples full of humus and clay. At the end, he proudly demonstrated his new knowledge for the group. “You can tell which ones have the most clay by squeezing them into ribbons,” he announced, holding up two examples.

The next week, the Earth Keepers dissected owl pellets, bundles like hairballs that the raptors cough up after meals. They searched and sorted the pellet contents to see what the owls had been eating. Ahmad, a new student in kindergarten, said, “I liked that you could find feathers in the owl pellet. I thought you could only find bones.” His newfound discovery reminded him of the food web, which we had discussed weeks before. The owl didn’t only eat mice, like he thought; it relied on lots of different species for survival!

“I saw that my owl pellet had rodent bones!” veteran Earth Keeper Jeffrey added. Even though the word ‘rodent’ wasn’t used in the activity, he remembered from an earlier rodent-themed program and was excited to apply his knowledge. He also mentioned rodents the next week when we learned about mammals, pointing out all the traits that made them similar and different from other animals in the group.

What inspired Jeffrey to maintain his excitement about rodents? A unique encounter in Earth Keepers, where the students had the opportunity to hold our baby mice. The same wonder on Jeffrey’s face while the mouse nestled into his palm is evident in our group every day. With the partnership of donors like you, we make a difference by putting ecology directly in children’s own hands!

Our Earth Keepers program teaches more than information about the natural world—it teaches our kids to have a positive impact in their community.

For the Winter session service day, the Earth Keepers did a big trash clean-up in the forest behind their school. We played “Trash Bingo” to inspire them to look for all kinds of waste, and even though the activity was only planned to last half the day, the kids’ passion for trashin’ could not be denied. We removed several pounds of waste from the woods and creek, from an abandoned soccer cleat to tiny shreds of plastic snack wrappings. We saved some things from the trash bin, too—when one group discovered a partly-deflated dodgeball, Sophie shouted, “Hey! That’s the one my class lost!” She returned it to her classroom before we left for the day. 

It wasn’t just the excitement of running around on a trash-hunting quest that had the students so focused. At the end of the day, they expressed how sad they were to find so much litter in the forest they love. “What do you think you can do to fix it?” I asked, and I was amazed at the responses. We all took a pinky pledge to live up to three of the suggestions the kids made: we wouldn’t litter, we would keep picking up trash that we found, and we would teach other people why they shouldn’t litter.

The spirit of service demonstrated by the Earth Keepers on our clean-up day hasn’t been forgotten. Instead, I’ve seen it grown in the weeks that followed. Students like Lucia have begun to come up to me regularly with lost wrappers or abandoned bottles, even though I haven’t specifically reminded them of their pledge to make their community more sustainable. “Picking up trash makes me happy,” she said proudly. “It’s important to take care of the Earth.”

Mehreen took the spirit of service even further. “When I grow up, I want to start a nature museum,” she declared. “Then I can teach everybody about nature!”

Every time one Earth Keeper shows their dedication to improving their school and community, all of them take notice. Your generous support allows these children to spend time in a community where each person is dedicated to a better, more sustainable world. Because of your contributions, these kids are inspired to action every week, and are truly learning to live up to the Earth Keeper name!

Links:

• EarthKeepers program