April 23, 2010
Wonderful pics from our Earth Day Celebration
Earth Day is such a special day at OCS. Here are some pics from yesterday's activities, including building and planting beds in the courtyard and planting trees throughout the property. Students -- thank you for all your help! Parents -- hope there aren't too many backaches this morning!
April 15, 2010
Earth Day April 22nd
Big happenings at OCS this April 22nd. The school will be celebrating Earth Day and we need your help! Students, staff and volunteers will be creating a sheet mulch garden, a terraced garden, holding an Earth Day groceries art project, creating compostable pots, trash sorting, a water relay race and (hopefully) inviting a guest speaker.
There will also be a plant sale managed by one of the 7/8 advisory groups. The students will be selling the following 'garden ready' seedlings: radishes, beans, bottle gourds, squash, sunflowers, herbs, collards, onions and more.
With the efforts of parents Ilse Ackerman and Laura Cooper, the school has secured the donation of 9 15-gallon trees which will be planted throughout the campus.
So we definitely need parent volunteers! Middle school students will be running many of the stations along with their teachers; however it’s always good to have adults around to smooth the process. Half day volunteers can be brought on board but nothing beats a full day volunteer! We would need you from 10am – 2:30pm.
Material Donations
shovels** for soil and mulch transport and tree planting
wheel barrels** for soil and mulch transport
river rock for making the boarder to a new garden
large sheets of cardboard that are brown/unbleached, free of tape and ready to compost
lumber 2x8 planks of pine or redwood
**Please put your name on any tools that you want returned to you.
Monetary donations are also welcome. It allows us to buy anything that is not donated.
Please contact Daryl Bilandzija (Darylb@ocsmail.org) or Aaron Bergmann (AaronB@ocsmail.org) for more information.
There will also be a plant sale managed by one of the 7/8 advisory groups. The students will be selling the following 'garden ready' seedlings: radishes, beans, bottle gourds, squash, sunflowers, herbs, collards, onions and more.
With the efforts of parents Ilse Ackerman and Laura Cooper, the school has secured the donation of 9 15-gallon trees which will be planted throughout the campus.
So we definitely need parent volunteers! Middle school students will be running many of the stations along with their teachers; however it’s always good to have adults around to smooth the process. Half day volunteers can be brought on board but nothing beats a full day volunteer! We would need you from 10am – 2:30pm.
Material Donations
shovels** for soil and mulch transport and tree planting
wheel barrels** for soil and mulch transport
river rock for making the boarder to a new garden
large sheets of cardboard that are brown/unbleached, free of tape and ready to compost
lumber 2x8 planks of pine or redwood
**Please put your name on any tools that you want returned to you.
Monetary donations are also welcome. It allows us to buy anything that is not donated.
Please contact Daryl Bilandzija (Darylb@ocsmail.org) or Aaron Bergmann (AaronB@ocsmail.org) for more information.
School Lunch on the Front Burner
School lunch reform advocates are raising the topic loudly and frequently in the news lately. Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" is beaming into American homes and creating urgency about the need to serve healthier meals to schoolchildren. It's evidently hit a nerve with the public. The ratings have been huge. Then there is FLOTUS Michelle Obama and her efforts to secure greater funding for the National School Lunch Program, a program which hasn't seen any apportionement increase for the past twenty years. She asked for a $1 dollar per student increase (from $2.67/day to $3.67/day) and got.... six cents. We are also hearing about school districts stepping up and demanding a change in their current lunch programs even in these times of budget cuts and stretched public education resources.
Here is some news from Parent Marialyce Pedersen about what the Washington D.C. school district is facing:
"A bill in the D.C. Council that would urge District public schools to improve the diets of students and support healthy lifestyles has been praised as being the right legislation during a time when childhood obesity has reached an all time high. D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray (D) have co-sponsored the "Healthy School Act of 2009." The bill would require that school meals, and in the case of children who are enrolled in after-school programs, consist of foods high in nutrients to help fight diseases that could possibly carry over into adulthood.
"We have made an enormous effort to reform education in D.C.," Cheh said.
"We need to improve the nutritional, health and wellness of the students. We are feeding students breakfast, lunch and those in after-school programs, dinner."
Cheh said that it’s important that children receive nutritional meals because they spend the majority of their days in school."The children are in our care," she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention polling indicates that 18 percent of D.C. students are obese and 35 percent are overweight. A U.S. Surgeon General's study that stated that children who are obese tend to grow up and suffer from medical conditions that include diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and cancer.
Economic status also contributes to childhood obesity. Thirty two percent of District children live in poverty and of that number, 19.2 percent live in abject poverty which includes homelessness or children who have no family support. Asthma afflicts 1 in 6 children in the District.
In an effort to promote the bill, Cheh has visited schools throughout the city, but said she experienced an epiphany at Kimball Elementary School in Southeast."We had a chef from the D.C. Kitchen to come by and cook squash soup," she said."Before he did, he asked the kids had any of them ever had squash soup and they said no. He [made the soup] and they kept coming for seconds and thirds."Cheh learned a thing or two about children’s palates that day, she said, "if you cook it, they will eat it."
Kimball Elementary students Deazon Gardner and Tamara Robinson joined dozens of individuals who rallied in favor of the bill. The youngsters participate in a program that encourages healthy eating and promotes school gardens.
Tamara, 8, said that there was far too much salt in the school cafeteria food and that the vegetables were not properly cooked while Deazon, 9, said that it was fun to learn how to grow their own food.
“Our food in the cafeteria is so bad,” Tamara, a third grader, said “that I do not eat at all and sometimes I go hungry.”
Basically, the bill would make school meals healthier and more nutritious; increase the amount of local and fresh fruits and vegetables served in schools; increase exercise and physical activity in the schools; promote school gardens, recycling, energy reduction and other green initiatives.
Here is some news from Parent Marialyce Pedersen about what the Washington D.C. school district is facing:
"A bill in the D.C. Council that would urge District public schools to improve the diets of students and support healthy lifestyles has been praised as being the right legislation during a time when childhood obesity has reached an all time high. D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray (D) have co-sponsored the "Healthy School Act of 2009." The bill would require that school meals, and in the case of children who are enrolled in after-school programs, consist of foods high in nutrients to help fight diseases that could possibly carry over into adulthood.
"We have made an enormous effort to reform education in D.C.," Cheh said.
"We need to improve the nutritional, health and wellness of the students. We are feeding students breakfast, lunch and those in after-school programs, dinner."
Cheh said that it’s important that children receive nutritional meals because they spend the majority of their days in school."The children are in our care," she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention polling indicates that 18 percent of D.C. students are obese and 35 percent are overweight. A U.S. Surgeon General's study that stated that children who are obese tend to grow up and suffer from medical conditions that include diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and cancer.
Economic status also contributes to childhood obesity. Thirty two percent of District children live in poverty and of that number, 19.2 percent live in abject poverty which includes homelessness or children who have no family support. Asthma afflicts 1 in 6 children in the District.
In an effort to promote the bill, Cheh has visited schools throughout the city, but said she experienced an epiphany at Kimball Elementary School in Southeast."We had a chef from the D.C. Kitchen to come by and cook squash soup," she said."Before he did, he asked the kids had any of them ever had squash soup and they said no. He [made the soup] and they kept coming for seconds and thirds."Cheh learned a thing or two about children’s palates that day, she said, "if you cook it, they will eat it."
Kimball Elementary students Deazon Gardner and Tamara Robinson joined dozens of individuals who rallied in favor of the bill. The youngsters participate in a program that encourages healthy eating and promotes school gardens.
Tamara, 8, said that there was far too much salt in the school cafeteria food and that the vegetables were not properly cooked while Deazon, 9, said that it was fun to learn how to grow their own food.
“Our food in the cafeteria is so bad,” Tamara, a third grader, said “that I do not eat at all and sometimes I go hungry.”
Basically, the bill would make school meals healthier and more nutritious; increase the amount of local and fresh fruits and vegetables served in schools; increase exercise and physical activity in the schools; promote school gardens, recycling, energy reduction and other green initiatives.
March 31, 2010
Arts Fundraiser at Space Gallery
Some artsy crafty photos of our Arts Committee fundraiser last month. A big thanks to all the parents who helped organize the brunch and arts sessions. Also, thank you to Hope Perello at Space Gallery in South Pasadena. We had a blast.
Making Sushi
Just some pics of our 5/6/7th graders making asian food at a recent Cooking Kids session. There were vegetarian sushi rolls, miso soup, gado gado (a tasty Malaysian salad) and Thai banana fritters. The cooking was hard work but oh, the results! Smiles all around.
March 4, 2010
Spanky at the Stove
Friend of the Beanstalk, Steve Tedesco, shows us his 'brooklyn-in-the-kitchen' best with a great video of two Italian American classics - Pasta with clams and Chicken Scarpariello. Add a glass of wine, maybe a little bread and hey, what's not to like?
Watch Steve at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73yu-0lT0uY
Watch Steve at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73yu-0lT0uY
Earth Hour
I'm forwarding on this great message from Crist Khachikian -- Thank you Crist and definitely let's do something at OCS! Parents, get in touch with your teachers and find out how your child's classroom can celebrate Earth Hour.
"On March 27th, we will be celebrating Earth Hour. We did this last year with the kids and, for some reason, it affected us all more than Earth Day did. Here is a link to the site: https://www.myearthhour.org/. I thought this might be an interesting thing to bring to the attention of the teachers, students, and families at Odyssey...maybe we can host an activity at school (hosted and paid for by our Center)."
"On March 27th, we will be celebrating Earth Hour. We did this last year with the kids and, for some reason, it affected us all more than Earth Day did. Here is a link to the site: https://www.myearthhour.org/. I thought this might be an interesting thing to bring to the attention of the teachers, students, and families at Odyssey...maybe we can host an activity at school (hosted and paid for by our Center)."
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