Animal Shelter fundraiser
Hi all! I gotta report on how the 7th and 8th grade “community service” club I am advising is doing. So far this year, we have volunteer face-painted at a fall festival and helped to decorate a “giving” tree at my school where staff by items for families within our school in need. Also, my kids are really interested in helping animals so we are raising money for the local animal shelter by raffling off gift baskets- a cat theme, dog theme and (TONS) of candy baskets. We started off with our tickets at $1 each and haven’t gotten many people buying tickets. SO, the kids voted earlier this week to lower the price by half (which entailed them tracking down everyone who’d already bought tickets- but they did!) and guess what- we are rolling in the $$! I was a little worried there at first when they wanted to lower it, but hey they made the decision and they have sold every single ticket! They have been selling all the last week and the selling continues into next week! Teachers are putting in like $10 at a time for a chance to win!
The students will then go shopping with the proceeds to buy supplies from a list the animal shelter gave us. Stay tuned for a report on the final amount raised!
Also, I have been thinking more and more how I can fit some service-learning into the ES curriculum. Any ideas?? I would love to not just be a club advisor for this stuff, but make it a integrated part of learning science and caring about the environment.
When I taught Social Studies I had my classes break into small groups (about 4 or 5 per group) and come up with their own community service projects. Some included: Caps for Cancer, Suitcases for Foster Children, Dying Easter eggs with nursing home residents, Pennies for Pets, Seatbelt Awareness, and Cubs for Cops (they collected teddy bears to be placed in cop cars to use to comfort children when they are involved in a wreck, family dispute, etc.) The newspaper did an article on us. The kids loved it.