It's Time!

 

The Kids Grow Green

Tomato Plant Sale

 

Where: Sioux Empire Farmer's Market

8th and Rail Road Center

Sioux Falls SD

 

When: Saturday May 3rd

 

Time: 8:00am-1:00pm

 

 

Some Plants are Big, and some plants are small...

 

But we need to sell them all!

 

Come to our tomato plant sale!

 

Proceeds to benefit..

Ground Works

Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum

Black Hills Raptor Center



It's Rummage Sale time!

It's Kingswood rummage sale time again. Kingswood is a HUGE area of rummage sales. We live in the extended  Kingswood area and our street is so busy, it is usually ends up like one way traffic.

So in keeping with tradition I set up shop at our rummage sale this year for an hour before soccer practice started.

I sold 15 tomato plants!

 

Not a bad start. I will be up and running again tomorrow after school.

 

While I sent to soccer practice the owner of Kidtopia Toy Store stopped by our rummage sale and saw my booth, tomato plants, and the Hood Magazine All Things Green Issue's I had sitting out. She was impressed and left her phone number and card with my grandparents, who were running our rummage while our family was at soccer events tonight.

 

She said if we have a lot of leftover Tomato plants we can come sell them outside of Kidtopia and she will send out a mass email to all of the people on her email list.

We also have a possible offer to sell plants outside a local Hy-Vee.

 

We will see how our May 3rd Sioux Empire Farmer's Market Sale goes and see how many plants we have leftover.

 

Happy Earth Day! We want to tell you about a Contest!

Looking for a way to celebrate Earth Day?

 

How about truly learning what can and can not be recycled in your recycling bin if you live in the Sioux Falls area?

Do you know?

Are you sure?

Do you ever ask yourself... Is this recyclable?  Do you find out or just guess?

 

 

 

Well I am here to share with you a way to solve this issue in your home and also possibly help you win your very own laptop in the process!

 

No I am serious!!

 

Millennium Recycling has a problem.

 Many people ask the same question two questions.

 

What CAN go into the recycling bin?

and..

What CANNOT go into the recycling bin?

 

To help them to better spread the word, and cut down on the confusion, they came up with a contest. You visit their website and learn what can, and cannot be recycled.

 

Here is a great place to get started.

 

Totally visit the link whether you enter the contest or not..

Learning something new to help the environment is a great way to celebrate Earth Day!
Or any day for that matter!

 

I even learned something new about what can and cannot be recycled.

 

Their website is kid friendly and has fun stuff for teachers as well.

 

 

 

Then to enter the contest make a YouTube video answering one of the questions.

 

The winner of the contest will receive a  Laptop from Bargain Bytes.

 

Here is a link to the contest page!

 

Millennium Recycling Video Contest


If you enter... to get more coverage for your video we want to post it on our blog to so we can help you share what you learned and learn along with you.
Send your video link to us as well at kidsgrowgreensf@live.com and we will post it!
This will be one of our Kids Grow Green Challenges as well.

 

Happy Earth Day!

 

 

Party For the Planet Photos

 

At the Party for the Planet Event at the Great Plains Zoo, we were able to teach many people how to recycle newspaper into origami seed planting pots. It was a popular booth activity.

 

It was a windy day so teaching in the wind was different than teaching at Ag Day.

 

We even had to attach our sign to the side of our booth onto a row of chairs, because it was the only way we could make it work with the wind.

We had a steady stream all 3 hours.

I am glad I had three friends sign up to help.

The theme was Princess and the Frog because April is national Frog month and in our break time we got to learn a bit about how far different frogs can jump.

Emma and Meagan jumping like frogs.

We have folded so many that we make it look easy. People were calling us "little professors."

We had our green hood shirts and my mom and I up cycled some frog headbands the night before  using some sticky foam we rescued from the local girl scouts who were tossing large scraps of it away at a reading event a couple years back. We brought home a big box of sticky foam scraps that day we rescued from the landfill and we have used it for many projects over the past couple years. It is handy to have and they were just tossing it.

 

I wonder how many of these we folded all together... That is a lot of newspaper we made into something new.

 

 

Nicole was back to help us fold again as well. She helped at Ag Day too.

 

Because there were 4 of us and two parents most of the time we got plenty of breaks to check out other booths too.

We were also advertising about the milk carton recycling as you can see our bin in the back.

 

We had a few people sign up for our email list so we can add them to our blog and we also were able to hand out Hood Magazine's All Things Green Issue with Kids Grow Green as the Cover Story.

 

It was a good day, but I was ready to be done by the end.

I am running out of steam a bit, this is hard work, but the sale is near.... and I do enjoy selling!

 

Some People Dye Eggs for Easter, We Transplanted Tomatoes.

 

My extended family pitched in and because it was windy outside we turned our dinning room table into tomato transplanting central. Grandma, Aunt, Uncle, brother's and cousins all helped.

My friend Sean came over to my house to transplant his plants today too.

 

That plastic swimming pool is getting a lot of use.

My uncle got holes drilled into all the remaining milk cartons.

I have a total of 192 plants transplanted at my house so far.

9 of my friends all have trays that have between 20 and 32 transplanted healthy plants at home.

 

This means if they all make it to May, we will have somewhere around 400 plants to sell.

 

We never did get around to dying eggs.

Thanks, Mike, Lilah, Lauren, Jack, Ethan and Grandma for helping me with my project today.

 

Come to the "Party for the Planet"

Looking for something to do tomorrow???

Come to....

Party for the Planet

Saturday, April 19, 2014

 

LOCATION:

Great Plains Zoo

DESCRIPTION:

Party for the Planet

Saturday, April 19, 1-4 p.m.

In honor of Earth Day, the Zoo hosts an annual “Party for the Planet.”  April is Frog Conservation month, join us as we celebrate the importance of frogs and conservation with a fairy tale twist.

Dress as a fairytale character or frog. Learn about saving your amphibian friends.

Journey through the Zoo for fun conservation activities.

Party for the Planet Event Schedule

Activities 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
- Wildlife friendly crafts at the Picnic Shelter.
- Frog jump contest near the Sanford Carrousel.
- EROS Data Center: Earth as Art Images on display in the Delbridge Museum of Natural History.

Zookeeper Talks
1:30 p.m.    Siamang Gibbons
2:00 p.m.    Cheetahs
2:30 p.m.    Grevy’s Zebra
3:00 p.m.    Eastern Black Rhinoceros
3:30 p.m.    Amur Tigers / Snow Leopards

Animal Encounters
1:15 p.m.    2:15 p.m.    3:15 p.m.

Dress Like a Frog Programs
1:45 p.m.    2:45 p.m.

These Groups will be present and provide activities and learning experiences about helping our planet.

Kids Grow Green will be presenting for Hood Magazine's Booth!

City of Sioux Falls Public Works	Sioux Falls Fire and Rescue
EROS Data Center: Earth As Art Images	Sioux Falls Herpetological Society
Girl Scouts Dakota Horizons	Sioux Falls Leading Green
The Hood Magazine	Sioux Falls Master Gardeners
Landscape Garden Centers	Siouxland Heritage Museums
Millennium Recycling Inc.	South Dakota International Princesses
Minnehaha Co. Dive Team	The Good Earth
SDSU Student Subunit of the American Fisheries Society	Tri-State Astronomical Society

Transplanting Day

We transplanted today!

 

 

We had parents, teachers, a master gardener and my classmates that could stay after school help transplant their plants from the sprouting trays into the milk cartons we collected from school lunch last week. Now they are ready to sell in a few weeks.

 

 

We had a lot of fun working together.

 

 

Gracie's dad was amazed how perfectly the milk cartons fit into the planting trays.

Nice huh. We didn't plan that it just happened.

 

 

We also got dirty and made a mess. The community center is great! They wouldn't even let us sweep up the extra dirt afterwards. They took care of it for us! Special thanks to Chad!

 

 

We had a few tomatoes that didn't make it, and some that were too small yet to transplant but we had a few extra sprouts we were able to send home with our friends to try again. I brought home some extras that need a little more time to catch up.

 

Here is a how to video on how we transplanted our plants in case you want to do this step at home.

 

Getting Ready To Transplant

Since I have more plants at my house than my classmates have. I decided to start transplanting mine at home to save some time. This day I worked for about 2 and a half hours transplanting. It was a nice day outside so it worked out great. 

Dumping dirt into the milk carton around my tomato plant.

We used a drill to make drainage holes in the bottom of each carton.

Putting my newly transplanted tomatoes back in the tray.

Repeat, again and again.

You can see all my plants to the right waiting their turn.

 

 

All ready for sale in their new milk carton homes.

 

 

They like it there!

Milk Carton Recycling !!!

 

I brought this nifty milk recycling system to school Monday and Tuesday and used it to collect milk cartons for transplanting our tomato plants into.

Step 1: Drink your milk.

Step 2: Empty your leftover milk (if you didn't finish it) into the bucket.

Step 3: Put your milk into the recycling container.

 It didn't seem to take much extra time or effort for the 2nd through 5 graders to do. I only had to rescue one or two full cartons from the bin to dump out and we saved a total 4 recyling containers full milk cartons from the landfill in two days. If we were to recycle them the bags of cartons would go in with our schools other recyclables.

We are using our milk cartons for my tomato plant sale project, but it was fun for my school to be able to try out this system and practice it so they are ready if the school were to decide to implement it full time.

If you would like to start this program in your school please visit 

The Carton Council website

If you live in the Sioux Falls area and are interested in recycling milk cartons at your school contact Millennium Recycling. 

using the link on their page.

 Starting Milk Carton Recycling in your school is one of our Kids Grow Green Challenges!

If you are the one to get this started in your school, contact us at kidsgrowgreensf@live.com and we will feature you on our blog! 

Click to see other KGG challenges

My cartons however took a trip home and got a quick bath.

 

All 400+ of them.

Ready for transplanting my tomato plants for sale day May 3rd.

Extra Sprouts, Milk Cartons, and Transplanting Plans

There are 3 Big things that are in the works.

1. We are discussing with the master gardeners as to when/what they want us to do with our extra sprouts. They are getting pretty big.

2. We are looking to set up a time to collect milk cartons soon at my school in order to transplant our tomato plants into them to sell. We will need to collect around 400 milk cartons. Our principal says it will take a couple days to get this many.  We will need parent volunteers to help collect and wash the cartons so please let my mom know if you can help during the day. 

We got fun collection containers from Millennium Recycling to use to collect our milk cartons. This it is part of the national Carton Council. Milk cartons and juice boxes are actually recyclable here now, and Roosevelt HS and one SF Middle school are already using this system to recycle them. We will be borrowing it and trying it out when we collect our milk cartons.

To learn more about how to get one for your school please contact or visit the link to

Millennium Recycling

3. We will have to set up a date/time to transplant our plants into school milk cartons so we can sell them. Most likely we will try to do this right after school one day this month. It will have to be after we have the milk cartons. We have plenty of dirt to do this. Your parents will have to bring your plants in that day either before school if our teacher let's us have them in the room for the day, or afterschool. We will love parent help with this activity as well.