The Salk school joins in

PS40 resides on the 1st, 2nd & 3rd floors of the Gothic building on the south side of 20th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue. The prestigious middle school, The Salk School can be found on the 4th & 5th floors of this beautiful building.

Several members of the Salk School student council volunteered to create the Salk Recycling team. Since mid February the Salk Recycling team has been meeting once a week with Suzie and Michele in an effort to get Salk in compliance with all recycling rules.


These students evaluated the needs of every Salk classroom and created a chart listing the classrooms and how many recycling cans and garbage cans were required. The list was given to the custodial staff and the bins were delivered.
Once the classrooms had the appropriate recycling & garbage cans, they brainstormed ideas to encourage the Salk students to recycle. They decided to make a funny 'hidden camera' video that they will screen at a school assembly. More ideas are sure to come.

Bash The Trash

BASH THE TRASH came to PS40 and the whole school got to see them.

Bash the Trash, as its name implies, is all about building musical instruments from unusual materials, such as recycled junk, discarded stereo components and old children's toys.

Their goal is to educate children about the connections of sound and acoustics to science, math, literacy and cultural studies through the use of simple musical instruments.

They work to promote environmental awareness through increased student participation in the three "R's" - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Bash The Trash feels Arts in our schools is very important, especially as linked to the Core Curricula - science, math, literacy and cultural studies.

As the student were leaving the autotorium several were singing to themselves the "reduce, reuse, recycle" song the had learned during the show.

Paper Making

With help from the Parents As Art Partners organization, PS40 students and their parents met in the cafeteria to learn about paper recycling and how to make paper of our own!








Very cool paper!

Earth Week is a SUCCESS!!!

Earth Week was a huge success!
The TrashMasters! table sold almost all of the 'Super Green Eco-Team' 100% organic cotton t-shirts.

The gently used book sale saw almost as many books go out as came in.


We raised twice the amount needed to plant the 450 trees.



Almost every child and adult who stopped by wrote a note to the earth and clipped it up to the hemp line that ran through our celebration area.

And the colorful reusable bags with the PS40 logo sold like hotcakes. With so many bags sold the checkout people at the supermarket are going to stop being surprised when we say, no thank you to another plastic bag.

Earth Week goes up!!!

The kids worked together to paint the 'Love The Earth' poster;
and we needed the tallest ladder to hang it.

The Cafeteria

Nice work, dropping your milk carton in the recycling can. Only milk/juice boxes, water bottles, soda cans and aluminum foil goes in that recycling can. With new signs up, the students in the cafeteria are really paying attention and working hard to to put their trash where it belongs.

EARTH WEEK!!

HI, If you don't already know, next week, March 3rd-7th, is Earth Week at PS40. There will be tables set up in the cafeteria during 'morning drop of' and 'end of day pick up' all week. 

PLEASE come and check it out. Buy an organic t-shirt designed by Super Green Eco-Daniel, bring us all your plastic bags and we'll take them to Whole foods for recycling and if you can guess how many we will collect you'll win a prize...buy a raffle to win an eco-friendly water bottle, purchase a reusable shopping bag (lots of beautiful colors)- better yet buy some for friends too! They are only $6! Donate your used books and buy some 'new' ones...Write a wish for the planet and get lots and lots and lots of info about what YOU can do to help the planet heal. 

Let's make learning about this fun and do it side by side with our kids, their energy and enthusiasm is awesome and inspiring...! Let's nurture it- for them, for us, for everyone...!

Please come and say hello and have some free coffee!!! 

OH YEA...AND FRIDAY IS 'BASH THE TRASH'

Go Kids Go!!!!!

During the day, classroom recycling monitors bring the recycling bins to the large bins at the end of the hall and dump them out. From there the custodians pick it all up and bag it for the street...GO KIDS GO!!

Jan/Feb 2008 Newsletter

If you missed the Eco Teams page in the Jan/Feb PS40 Newsletter, here it is...lots of great tips and resources on the web....

Inspectors and their badges!!

Have you noticed these signs on the classroom doors yet?

The student council, 'Super Green Eco Team' have been inspecting every classroom at PS40 and if the classroom's recycling bins pass their inspection- they get an 'A-OK' super recycling badge. We've had many students come up to us in the hallways- 'we got our badge!!'

The Super Green Eco Teams' goal is to have the badge on every classroom and office door!! 

Here is an example of the checklist they fill out....

The First Bulletin Board!

Has everyone seen the bulletin board that's been in the cafeteria since last fall??? Well it's gone now, and we have put up a lot of very powerful images of plastic bags and the harm they do to the environment. 

But here is the first bulletin board- just in case you missed it!

The 100th day of school & recycling!

On Feb. 11, 2008 all grades at PS40 collaborated with Craig Kane, the art teacher, to celebrate the 100th day of school. The Student Council decided on a recycling project which the school is actively practicing this year.

K through fourth grade were asked to bring recyclable objects- empty cereal boxes, aluminum foil, plastic bottles, brown paper bags & paper rolls on the 100th day. 5th graders were asked to bring in tins of food to give to those in need. Throughout the 100th day Craig supervised the building of sculptures made from them.

What was made? A replica of PS40 built from 100 cereal boxes, with the students represented in front by plastic bottles. A teepee structured of cardboard strips and covered with brown paper bags stood behind a man made of toilet and paper towel rolls with a circus dog of aluminum foil!!

It was a satisfying metaphor for the school’s recycling project- in which individual efforts, that might seem insignificant on their own, become something meaningful when combined with the efforts of others.

And this project will itself be recycled to become part of the PS40 bid in the citywide competition for the “Trashmasters! Super Recyclers’ Golden Apple Award” this May.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE…RETHINK!

We couldn't do it without them!!

Here's a big THANKS!!!! To Shawn (directly below) and Joe, Elliot and Hector (bottom pic, from left to right) for helping us to recycle! Look out for the Super Green Eco Team's interview of the custodial team, coming soon!

Taking it home!!

There is always something to learn, and it seems that our kids are our greatest teachers in so many ways. Here is a recycling story from a mother of 2 girls at PS40...

Recycled Trash is so much more than our actual trash

My daughters (in 1st grade and 5th grade at PS40) told me that two women (parents of PS 40) came into their classrooms and spoke to them about recycling and showed them examples as well as took questions. A question that had been boggling us was whether tissues could be recycled or not. I figured they are made of paper so why not? But I was informed by my daughters that indeed they are not recyclable because we sneeze into them. I was quite surprised but I learned something new. At home we've always recycled but now Meagan and Morgan are seeing to it that we are bringing their lessons home and learning what goes where. It is so nice to see that they care for their environment and their future - that they are making sure to take part not only in school but at home as well and when we visit family they are making sure to inform them too. We've also taken great notice that we have very little actual trash and lots of recycled trash to put out. When you sort everything on a regular basis you can really notice that we don't have much actual trash but we do have a lot of actual recycled materials.
written by: Annette

On the tour....

Here we are on our whirlwind tour....