3rd Grade Community Service Club
A Berrian School neighbor asked what we were doing out in the neighborhood during recess time. The children excitedly answered, "We’re picking up trash to help our neighborhood look nice."
Then came the words that warmed my heart "The world needs us!" yelled Gwen.
We started this club during the 2002-2003 school year to instill in our students the value of service. We promote "helping" in three communities: our school, our city and our world. All 3rd graders are members of this club. Students are involved in a variety of projects throughout the school year.
Projects for the 2003-2004 school year (this list is not all-inclusive)
Service to our Berrian School Community
BUG and WISH Role Plays – 3rd graders role-play for the new Kindergarteners. Bug and Wish is a verbal tool we use to cut down on problems in the classroom, recess, and the lunchroom.
Kindergarteners practice their "BUG and WISH" skills after the 3rd graders help them understand how to use this new way of avoiding conflicts with their classmates.
Kind messages/gifts for teachers/staff – Through-out the year 3rd graders write kind messages and make little gifts to show appreciation for the teachers and staff.
Let’s keep our school clean – 3rd graders perform a variety of tasks to help our custodians. Cleaning lunchroom tables, dusting shelves, and cleaning glass doors are a few examples.
Raising and Lowering of the Flag – 3rd graders are responsible for raising and lowering the Flag in front of our school each day. A former Marine speaks to the students at the beginning of the school year instructing them on proper flag etiquette.
The Kindness Play – 3rd graders wrote and performed a Kindness Play for the entire school, family members and a neighboring elementary school. They used their recess time for over a month to get ready for their performances. We will have a play this year as well.
Decorate the tree with warmth – 3rd graders will be decorating our school holiday tree with mittens, gloves and hats donated by our staff. All donated items will be used to help students in our school stay home this winter.
Service to our Quincy City Community
Pennies for Puppies – 3rd grade community service members made posters and did announcements promoting the penny drive. Our whole school was involved in collecting pennies for the Humane Society. At the conclusion of our September Reading Challenge "Reading is just doggone fun" assembly a representative from the Humane Society spoke to our students about the mission of the agency. Over a two-week period our students raised $280.00 in coins. Six 3rd graders went to the bank to convert the buckets of pennies to actual paper currency. Then six third graders were chosen to go shopping with that money to purchase supplies. Farm and Home supply store generously gave us a 25% discount on our purchases allowing us to purchase even more items. The 3rd graders enjoyed picking out a variety of pet supplies for our donation. The pet supplies were then brought back to school and displayed on the stage so the whole school could see all the things that we were able to purchase. The children were amazed to see the power of the simple penny.
Fall Harvest Food Collection – 3rd grade Community Service members helped make a banner, distribute boxes to the classrooms, make announcements and made daily trips to the classrooms to collect the food items. All food items are counted by the 3rd graders. For every 4 items collected the classroom received a red thank you sticker for their door. On the stage above the large banner are calendar months. For every 4 items a red sticker is placed on a day of the week symbolizing a meal for a family. The 2003 Salvation Army Fall Harvest total was 904 items. We provided a family dinner for 226 days!
National Kindness and Justice Challenge – This will be our 3rd year to participate in the National Kindness and Justice Challenge in honor of Martin Luther King. This annual challenge is sponsored by the Do Something Organization. The challenge this year runs from Jan 19-30. This is one of our biggest events of the year! The whole school is involved in the challenge. We record our acts of Kindness and Justice for those two weeks. During this challenge the students write, draw, create a project for display at the local Mall. We also build a school project to symbolize all the wonderful acts of kindness and justice that were performed those two weeks. The first year we made a Kindness Quilt. Last year we built a Kindness House for Buddy Bear (our school Kindness Bear) and his friend, Freda the Friendship Frog. The house was built from several refrigerator boxes that were covered with Kindness Bricks with all of our student names written on them. This was displayed for two weeks at the Mall along with exhibits of our students writing, drawings and projects about kindness, justice, and Martin Luther Kings’ message and hopes for our world. On the Saturday following our challenge finale 3rd grade Community Service members went to the Mall to distribute Kindness messages to mall-goers. Our plans for this years’ challenge are still being finalized. Watch for updates in February! It’s going to be FUN!
2004 Kick-off Assembly 3rd graders receive Kindness Day Proclamation
and tour from Quincy Mayor Chuck Scholz
May Day Basket Celebration
This will be our third year to celebrate May Day. Each student has a small decorated basket with a potting plant, hand-written note and small craft inside. We go out into our neighborhood leaving baskets with our neighbors or on the doorstep if no one is home. 3rd grade students are responsible for writing letters to the Healthy Youth, Healthy Community Organization asking for a grant to help defray the expenses for this project. We have received a grant each year. 3rd graders are involved in a variety of pre-May Day responsibilities such as arranging for baskets (Salvation Army has donated some in the past), ordering potting plants to go in the baskets, assigning certain street addresses for each classroom, distributing the baskets, flowers and maps to each classroom. This has been a wonderful community event for our students. We have received so many notes and cards from our neighbors thanking us for brightening their day!