KELSET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

• Our school opened in September 08. It is built to LEEDS standards (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)

• Our goal is to be leaders in Environmental Education

GOAL – To become an Earth School

• With the help of the SEEDS binders, we are tracking our environmental projects. We hope to one day become an “Earth School”. To accomplish this, the students have to work on 1000 environmentally-related Projects. Prior to moving into this school, we had already begun a number of projects and reached Green School Status. (100 projects)

EXTEME RECYCLING

• Here is a project we started while we were at McTavish – Extreme Recycling. Not only do we recycle all paper and beverage containers, we recycle ALL plastics including Styrofoam, soft plastics, foil-lined wrappers, and hard plastics. We wondered if it would be possible to continue this in a much bigger school.

Community Depot • While at McTavish, we also

decided we should start a plastics depot for our community too. On the fourth Saturday of each month, people bring all their plastics to the depot. Here’s a picture of that gives you an idea of how much plastic we collect each month. Students, staff and parents from KELSET along with other members from our community volunteer every 4th Saturday of the month. If you live in the Victoria area, Google Pacific Mobile Depot to find out if there is a depot near you.

Calendar of Events September 08

• September was very busy as we got our new school set up. One of our priorities was to continue our extreme recycling program so we purchased 20 bin towers- one for each classroom and one for the staff room. We soon find out we can manage this in our larger school. Other schools, including middle and high schools, have followed our example and started recycling all their plastics too.

October 08

Waste Reduction Week – The grade 4 students did the advertising for Waste Reduction Week - Oct 19- 25 - Look at how much garbage the whole school collected after one week!

November 08

• About a week late, we did the “Voices of Nature” concert with Holly Arntzen and Kevin Wright. The money we raised is going towards supporting environmental

projects at our school.

• On a cold November day, 6 classes participated in planting over 200 native species plants. We could never have done it without the help of HAT (Habitat

Acquisition Trust)

December 08

The school district decided to support our efforts. They chose our school to pilot a new project. They supplied us with 2 organic waste totes and 2 large blue bin totes for tin, glass and hard plastics.

January 09 Examples of classroom projects

• Whole school watched Saving Luna.

• Endangered Species research

• Visit from Oases• Salmon Restoration

project

January 09

• Visit (with tortoises) from Oasis• Salmon Restoration project

February 09

• We film our video project for the Green Games contest.

March – June 09 upcoming events/projects

• March 31 – Return-it Man workshop • Spring planting – With HAT, dozens of ground cover

plants will be added to our Naturescape Garden • April & May - Sierra Club presentations • Early May – singing with Holly Artnzen (voices of Nature)

at the Empress Hotel. • Releasing the Salmon in the stream• Stream of Dreams project

At KELSET we are sowing the seeds for change.

Acknowledgements

• Videographers – Angela Goddard and Brett White• Teacher/producer – Maria St. Amand• And off course, to all our Green Team students at KELSET• Special thanks to Laurie Parker and Todd Carnahan from HAT and

Holly Arntzen and Kevin Wright from Voices of Nature