Bambini Ball

Goat on a Boat, which docked at Bay Street Theater last fall after more than a decade in a separate space on East Union Street, will celebrate its 15 years of puppetry in Sag Harbor at its annual Bambini Ball on Friday, May 20.

The family ball, which will be held at Bay Street starting at 5:30 p.m., will include puppet-making, games, dancing, pizza, and a puppet show. Tickets cost $15 and are available online at baystreet.org or by calling the theater’s box office.

‘Little Shop of Horrors’

The young actors of Stages, a Children’s Theatre Workshop, will present the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” on the Bay Street Theatre stage on Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $15.

The long-running Broadway hit tells the story of Seymour, an assistant in a flower shop who discovers an exotic singing plant with an insatiable lust for human blood. The more he feeds her, the more she wants, putting Seymour in a pretty tough spot. Helene Leonard directs and choreographs the Stages production; Amanda Jones and James Benard provide musical accompaniment.

Warts and Feathers

Children ages 6 to 8 will make toad temples as they learn about these beneficial creatures on Saturday at the South Fork Natural History Museum. The program begins at 10:30 a.m. On Sunday at the same time, young ones 3 to 5 years old will learn the basics of birding and have some close encounters with feathered friends. There is a $3 materials fee for each program, and advance registration is required.

Organic-Minded

With the sun finally appearing this week, things seem to be growing before our eyes. At the Montauk Library on Saturday, Renato Stafford, an organic gardener, will lead a family workshop on the basics of organic gardening. From 1 to 2:30 p.m., Mr. Stafford will work with families to build a compost pile, set up a garden bed, even find worms. Participants, who must be 5 or older, will learn about watering and plant something they can take home for their own gardens.

But the great outdoors has its perils, as parents know all too well, ticks and mosquitoes being at the top of that list. Over at the East Hampton Library on Tuesday at 4, kids 4 and older can make their own natural and organic bug spray using essential oils.

Advance registration is required for the programs at both libraries.

Two students with a first-hand understanding of the challenges faced by immigrants have organized an East Hampton High School Key Club campaign to collect and distribute needed items to refugees in Greece and elsewhere.

“Both of my parents are immigrants,” said Alicia Benis, who is of Greek descent. She spearheaded the effort with a friend, Myra Arshad, who is Pakistani. Watching the news in recent months about the tide of refugees from countries such as Syria trying to reach new places to live in Europe, “I felt horrible,” Ms. Benis said. “I didn’t want to stay silent.”

“We’re both from immigrant families,” said Ms. Arshad, who, like many of the refugees displaced by wars overseas, is Muslim. “We love international affairs, we love politics. We always talk about world affairs.” She was working recently on an article about migration for the school paper.

The Key Club, she said, spearheads a number of initiatives locally, but the two friends wanted to expand the efforts internationally. “I know that if I were in that situation, that we needed to leave this country, we would want someone to help us,” Ms. Benis said.

 “We always wanted to help people. We also wanted to inform people,” said her friend.

The two suggested to the Key Club that members collect clothing to ship to distribution sites on the Greek islands. With the help of Meghan MacNish, the club’s advisor, the effort got underway, and fellow students from throughout the school pitched in. 

They contacted the Starfish Foundation, an organization that coordinates donations on the Greek island of Lesbos, to pinpoint current needs, and arranged to ship some of the goods to Kalymnos, another island in the Aegean where refugees have landed, and where Ms. Benis’s sister lives.  About 90 pounds of goods were boxed up and shipped.

The effort was successful enough that extra items were given to a school security guard with roots in Haiti, for donation there. Some items were also donated here in East Hampton, to the Retreat, the domestic violence treatment center and shelter.

A former Springs School District clerk who is suing the district claiming she was the victim of a hostile work environment has formally resigned from her primary position as the superintendent’s secretary.

Fran Silipo, who had been the secretary since 1999, had been on an unpaid medical leave since Oct. 29, 2015, when she suffered a stroke, which affected the right side of her body. It happened two days after Ms. Silipo filed a notice of claim that she intended to sue the school district, saying she had suffered “extreme emotional and psychological stress” resulting from “a hostile work environment.”

Ms. Silipo lost her district clerk post without notice last summer, after receiving the appointment every year for the previous 13 years. In July, the Springs School Board appointed a different district clerk in a 4-1 vote that followed a lengthy executive session. Ms. Silipo was still employed as the secretary to the superintendent, John J. Finello, after that, but she later said working conditions deteriorated quickly.

She could not be reached for comment this week. Word of her resignation brought public speakers to the podium at Monday’s school board meeting.

“It’s a big loss to our school community, and I hope this speeds her recovery,” Ilaine Bickley, a second-grade teacher at the school, said.

Mary Jane Auceri, a Springs resident, agreed. “I think it’s a great loss for the school district of a person who was able to fill many different hats, affected many families, and always did so with a smile, extreme honesty, and effectiveness.”

Tatiana Tucci, a former Springs School bilingual clerk who herself is involved in a lawsuit against the district, also lamented Ms. Silipo’s resignation. “Moving forward, when you find someone who is good, honest, and willing to give their best, appreciate that person and treat them with respect,” Ms. Tucci said.

Liz Mendelman, the school board president, said district officials could not comment on matters related to employees. The board formally voted to accept Ms. Silipo’s resignation on Monday.

A Festival of the Arts at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday will feature free art workshops, student performances, raffles of art supplies and musical instruments, a tree planting ceremony, and a miniature version of the Mystery Art Sale, which had been held in the last two years and is being replaced by the festival.

The event will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the tree to be planted in memory of the late Springs artist Ralph Carpentier at 11 a.m. Workshops in different arts with 15 artists, each lasting 30 to 40 minutes, follow between 12 and 4 p.m. An exhibition of student artwork will be on view and also open to the public on Thursday and Friday. “This year we decided to do something a little bit different,” Colleen McGowan, an art teacher at the school, said on Tuesday. “It’s a give-back to the community for their support over the last couple of years of the unified arts program at the Springs School.”

Angelina Modica, the music teacher, explained that the school’s unified arts program brings together several disciplines, including art, music, and theater, and others. For instance, students will demonstrate African drumming, which was taught by a Sag Harbor drummer, along with lessons on African history.

The drumming program was made possible by the Greater East Hampton Education Foundation, which provided money to buy drums, materials for the students to create costumes, and to bring a professional teacher. The Festival of the Arts is sponsored in part by the East Hampton Arts Council and the Springs School PTA.

Also at the festival, cards showing historical Springs scenes drawn by fourth graders will be for sale. Proceeds from the card sales, as well as the raffles and art sale will benefit the unified arts program.

“We’re hoping for a warm, sunny, celebratory day of creating art and music with the community, highlighting the Springs School, and thanking the community for their support over the years,” Ms. McGowan said.

Residents of local school districts will head to the polls on Tuesday to decide the fate of eight school budgets, including two that are over the state-imposed limit on tax levy increases.

That limitation had an almost uniform impact on local schools as they looked to curtail spending as much as possible and found ways to collaborate with neighboring districts to save money. For instance, Springs and East Hampton found themselves compromising on the cost of busing student athletes in shared sports, and Wainscott and Sag Harbor crafted new agreements for transportation and tuition that have the potential to save money for Wainscott while boosting revenue in Sag Harbor.

Two districts, Sagaponack and Montauk, worked out decreases in their proposed tax levies. However, in Amagansett and Bridgehampton, rising costs overwhelmed resources, and the threat of cuts to key programs and services was deemed too severe. Those two districts put forth budget proposals that attempt to pierce the tax cap, which will need a supermajority of at least 60 percent voter approval in order to pass. Voters will also cast ballots on Tuesday for school board candidates; four districts, Montauk, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Springs, have contested races.

Below is a district-by-district guide to what’s on the ballot for Tuesday.

AMAGANSETT

Voting hours: 2-8 p.m. in the school gymnasium, 320 Main Street, Amagansett

School budget proposal: $10,473,428

Library budget proposal: $995,223

School board candidates (two seats available): Kristen V. Peterson, Hank Muchnic

Notes: Amagansett’s budget proposal attempts to pierce the state-imposed cap on tax levy increases, so the district will need a super-majority of at least 60 percent of voters to approve the budget. With a proposed tax levy increase of 3.74 percent, it is estimated that for a homeowner with an assessed property value of $6,000, school taxes would rise by about $40 for the year.

If Amagansett fails to pass its budget, it could resubmit the same budget or propose a modified one for a second budget vote in June, but if it fails a second time, the district would be relegated to a contingency budget that includes no increases whatsoever. School officials have said such a scenario would lead to cuts of more than $300,000, including after-school and summertime activities, prekindergarten for 3-year-olds, teacher layoffs, and more.

An unanticipated increase in the amount of tuition paid this year to East Hampton schools led to a shortfall in the amount of leftover money available to be applied toward next year’s budget, and the tuition payments are expected to rise again next year. The proposed budget also includes a 1.5-percent salary increase for teachers, and preserves all programs and services currently in place at the school.

Related: Amagansett Board Grilled Over Budget

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Voting hours: 2-8 p.m. at Bridgehampton School, 2685 Montauk Highway

School budget proposal: $13,778,439

School board candidates (two seats available): Michael Gomberg, Jennifer Vinski

Notes: Bridgehampton’s budget proposal attempts to pierce the tax cap, with an 8.7-percent increase in the tax levy on the table, so a super-majority of voter approval is needed to pass the budget. Bridgehampton School officials opted to override the tax cap after realizing the kind of reductions they would have had to make would have severely impacted the students: Cuts to after-school programs, summer camps, driver’s education, career and technical programs, teacher and staff layoffs, and more were on the table. The proposed budget, however, preserves all current programs, services, and staffing at the Bridgehampton School.

EAST HAMPTON

Voting hours: 1-8 p.m. at East Hampton High School, 2 Long Lane

School budget proposal: $66,721,301

School board candidates (three seats available): James Foster, Alison Anderson, Wendy Geehreng, Rich Wilson

Notes: East Hampton’s proposed budget increases the tax levy by .68 percent, which is within the state’s allowable limit on tax levy increases for the district, while keeping year-over-year spending within a 1-percent increase. School officials are keeping expenses mostly level across the district next year, though the proposed budget includes some extra funding for buses and support in the areas of elementary school music and science, middle school math and science, and high school science, social studies, and math. Increases are offset by a significant savings in teacher salaries due to the retirement of about 20 veteran teachers and staff members. The district intends to replace them with younger teachers or teachers newer to the profession. The district estimates that for a house with an assessed value of $6,000, the school tax increase would be about $23 next year.

MONTAUK

Voting hours: 2-8 p.m. at Montauk School, 50 South Dorset Drive

School budget proposal: $18,978,163

School board candidates (two seats): Patti Leber is running unopposed for one seat; Cynthia Ibrahim and Thomas Flight are running for a second seat.

Notes: The Montauk budget proposal stays within the tax cap limitations. It actually carries a decrease in spending of about $15,000 from the current year’s budget, with the associated tax levy decrease coming in at just under 1 percent and the tax rate expected to drop by $5.39 down to $544.40 per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. The school expects to see savings on high school tuition, with fewer students heading to East Hampton next year, which allows the district to keep its home programs intact.

SAG HARBOR

Voting hours: 7 a.m.-9 p.m. at Pierson High School, 200 Jermain Avenue

Budget proposal: $38,773,988

Propositions: Vote yes/no on bond referendum in the amount of $10,233,500 to purchase and renovate the former Stella Maris Regional School.

School board candidates (two seats available): Susan Kinsella, Susan Lamontagne, Chris Tice, Roxanne Briggs

Notes: With a tax levy increase of 2.98 percent, Sag Harbor’s 2016-17 proposed budget stays below the state tax levy cap while maintaining all current programs, services, and staffing levels, school officials say. For a house with a market value of $1 million, school taxes could rise about $150, though that amount will fluctuate depending on whether the house is located in East Hampton Town or Southampton Town.

SAGAPONACK

Voting hours: 7:30-8:30 p.m. at Sagaponack School, 400 Sagg Main Street

Budget proposal: $1,776,756

School board candidates (one seat available): Cathy Hatgistavrou

Notes: Sagaponack’s proposed budget shows a mere $4,251 increase over last year’s budget. With an increase in state funding and tuition payments from nonresident students paying to attend Sagaponack School, the resulting proposal carries a very slight tax levy decrease. The district will spend less on classroom equipment, textbooks, and tuition to other schools, but will spend more on teachers’ salaries, field trips, activities, and supplies. The budget also includes $37,000 for new playground equipment, which will be supplemented by donations from community members.

SPRINGS

Voting hours: 1-9 p.m. at Springs School, 48 School Street

Budget proposal: $27,630,067

Proposition: Vote yes/no to enter into a three-year installment payment plan for the purchase of one large, 66-passenger school bus, for which the first year’s cost of $42,000 is included in the proposed budget.

School board candidates (two seats available): Adam Wilson, Amy Rivera, David Conlon

Notes: The proposed Springs School budget stays within the state-imposed limit on tax levy increases, while keeping year-over-year spending to an increase of just under 1 percent. School officials slashed spending in several areas, including some teacher and administrator salaries, to offset rising expenses such as tuition for high school students and health benefits. School officials say this proposed budget maintains all of the district’s core academic programs. If passed, it is estimated that for a Springs house with an assessed value of $800,000, taxes would rise by about $12 per year.

WAINSCOTT

Voting hours: 2-8 p.m. at Wainscott School, 47 Wainscott Main Street

Budget proposal: $3,036,916

School board candidates (1 seat available): William Babinski Jr.

Proposition: Vote yes/no on two tuition agreements with the Sag Harbor School District, one for Sag Harbor Elementary School and one for Pierson Middle/High School.

Notes: Wainscott’s proposed budget would decrease the tax levy by 1.16 percent and overall spending by about $27,000. It would be the fifth consecutive budget in which spending decreased, and the fourth in which the tax levy dropped. The budget maintains the current programs and services and adds a full-time teaching assistant, as the number of students at the school is expected to increase. Residents are also asked to vote yes or no on tuition contracts with the Sag Harbor School District, which would ultimately give families the choice of sending their children to East Hampton or Sag Harbor schools after they have finished third grade at the Wainscott School.

Voting for school board members is on Tuesday, at the same time that residents cast their ballots on school district budget proposals. Of the districts The Star covers, there are contested races in Montauk, East Hampton, Springs, and Sag Harbor. Candidates in Amagansett, Bridgehampton, Sagapon­ack, and Wainscott are running unopposed.

Candidates in all but three races were covered last week; here are short biographies of candidates from Montauk, Sagaponack, and Wainscott.

Montauk

In the Montauk School District, Patti Leber, the board’s vice president, is running unopposed to keep her seat, while Cynthia Ibrahim and Tom Flight are vying to fill out the term of Jason Biondo, who is stepping down at the end of June. He had three years left on the board.

Ms. Leber, who has a background in finance and holds an M.B.A., has been on the board since 2001. She became involved to be an advocate for her two children, who have since graduated. A member of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, she works as a realtor at Town and Country Real Estate.

“I want to create lifelong learners and thinkers,” she said, and added that by being a part of the curriculum committee she will try to encourage an agenda that instills in students a curiosity and a hands-on, multidisciplinary approach. She wants to further the district’s emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and arts so that it can educate students who can compete in a global community.

Ms. Ibrahim has lived in Montauk for 35 years. She has a daughter in seventh grade at the school and is very involved with the community. She is a past treasurer of the Montauk PTA, the treasurer of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation, and a Girl Scout Leader. She works at Douglas Elliman real estate.

She has a high regard for education and is trying to instill that in her daughter, she said. She wants to see that all children get the education she believes they deserve, but she is against the Common Core curriculum and would like to see it abandoned. Ms. Ibrahim is especially interested in the fields of art and music. She would like to see before and after-school programs in those fields. “I would work hard so the teachers and students get what they deserve,” she said.

Mr. Flight is the father of three children, ages 9, 7, and 4, all of whom will be attending the Montauk School in September. “My family is the most important thing in my life,” he said.

He said he is running because children are the future. “How well we educate them determines how well this country will do. . . . Education to me is a balance of excellent schooling and strong role models, both at home and outside of work.” He believes the Montauk School’s teachers and superintendent are doing a great job, but said, “like everything there are areas we will need to evolve and reconcile over the coming years, and as part of the school board this is something I hope I could help guide.”

He was schooled in England and earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Edinburgh and Cambridge University Business School. He has worked for Gap, leading a real estate strategy group that analyzed the best locations for new stores, and was a head of finance for Walmart and Ann Taylor. In 2009, he started his own group of three stores at Gosman’s Dock in Montauk: Homeport, Captain Kid Toys, and Pier Group. He now has six stores and said he employs more than 30 people in the peak season. He has played rugby for the Montauk Sharks and is a member of the Montauk Fire Department and a certified emergency medical technician.

Sagaponack

Cathy Hatgistavrou, who was first elected to the board in a special election in 2011, has been a resident of Sagaponack for about 14 years. She is a parent of two children who attended the Sagaponack School. Her involvement began when she joined a scholarship committee that raised money for awards for graduating high school seniors who hailed from Sagaponack. Ms. Hatgistavrou has 25 years’ experience as a certified public accountant, including 13 years as a comptroller for a university medical center in New Jersey. She said her goals include promoting the Sagaponack School’s educational model to local families, balancing school traditions with updated curriculum and technology, and continuing to be fiscally responsible.

Wainscott

William Babinksi Jr. is running unopposed to retain his seat on the Wainscott School Board. This will be his second three-year term. Mr. Babinski did not return calls for comment.

LongHouse’s Family Day

Saturday is Family Day at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. there will be tours on the half-hour as well as activities for children and snacks for young visitors who work up an appetite exploring the gardens. East End students will perform throughout the property. Admission is free during the Family Day hours. The gardens will remain open for paying visitors until 5 p.m. that day.

Peconic Fun Day at CMEE

Activities for the whole family will also be on the agenda at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton on Saturday when the museum and more than a dozen other organizations and businesses host the annual Peconic Family Fun Day from 10 a.m. to noon.

The celebration of the East End’s ecosystems, estuaries, and environments will include games, arts and crafts, seed planting, and music. There will be local food to sample and live animals to meet. At 10, Southampton Hospital and East End Tick will present an educational program for kids on tick awareness and tick-borne illnesses, delivered in the form of an interactive puppet show. The Bridgehampton School’s marimba band will perform, and there will be guided walks and an opportunity to make fish-print T-shirts.

Among the many co-sponsors of the event are Amaryllis Farm, the South Fork Natural History Museum, Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt, the Quogue Wildlife Refuge, the Long Island Aquarium, the Peconic Estuary Program, and Group for the East End. Admission is free.

Crafts for Mother’s Day

Children too busy with school and sports — and all the activities Mom has been driving them to — to stop and take note of their mother in advance of her special day will be given a chance to make up for that this weekend at the Amagansett and East Hampton Libraries.

On Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, the East Hampton Library will provide the materials for teens to make a last-minute Mother’s Day gift: a box to hold something special.

Families can make magnets together at 1:30 p.m. on Mother’s Day at the Amagansett Library. Materials will be provided; reservations are not necessary. At the East Hampton Library at 3 p.m., kids can stop in with their moms for a Mother’s Day story time and card workshop.

Also at the East Hampton Library this week, children 4 and older can make rattles and tambourines during a workshop on Wednesday at 4 p.m. In a two-part workshop that meets on Wednesday and May 18 from 4 to 5 p.m., students in fourth through eighth grades will learn to create a basic video game using the Kodu program and to program their main character.

Advance registration is required.

Tennis and Golf Clinics

Tennis clinics for kindergartners through sixth graders begin next week at the East Hampton Youth Park on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett. Sessions for those in kindergarten and first grade will meet on Wednesdays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. through June. The second and third-grade session will run from 6:30 to 7:30. Kids in fourth through sixth grade can learn the basics or improve their skills on Fridays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. starting May 13.

The cost is $45 per child. Registration is at the East Hampton Town Parks and Recreation Department or the Montauk Playhouse Community Center.

The Recreation Department will also offer golf clinics at Montauk Downs State Park on Sundays from May 15 through June 19. Kids in kindergarten through second grade will take to the greens from 9 to 10 a.m. or 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.; those in third through sixth grade will take over from noon to 1 p.m. Sign-up is at Montauk Downs in advance of the start date. The cost is $125 per person.

It has been a couple of months since 24 Pierson High School students returned from the field trip of a lifetime: a visit to Cuba, not long after its borders were reopened to American visitors. It’s safe to say the excursion left a lasting impression.

An exhibition of student photographs from Cuba and artwork inspired by that trip, along with a musical performance of an Afro-Cuban piece by some of the students, will open on Saturday at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum.

“We’ve done a lot of trips, not to Cuba, but to Spain and Italy. What will happen a lot of times is that the trip itself will be the catalyst for the kids continuing to find out about places, doing work when they get back here so that the trip itself is not the end,” Peter Solow, a Pierson art teacher who accompanied the students to Cuba, said by phone this week. “With this particular trip, this is a little more than we normally do. . . . We’re taking it to an additional level with having this exhibition.”

The opening reception will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, with a panel discussion by students and their chaperones ahead of that, from 4 to 5:30. The exhibit itself will run through May 17 at the museum, at 200 Main Street in the village.

According to Mr. Solow, the museum invited the students to plan a show six months ago — before they had even left for their trip in February.

“It’s been very impressive watching the kids,” he said. “They’re still so invested in it.”

East Hampton School District officials have acknowledged that an experiment done on a breaded chicken patty sandwich by an eighth-grade student was the catalyst for change.

The school district recently announced that it would begin serving a fresh version of its breaded chicken menu items, including chicken fingers and a chicken sandwich, following the discovery by Tycho Burwell, an East Hampton Middle School student, that a breaded chicken patty from the school cafeteria did not develop much mold after being left out for a few weeks. By comparison, in the same experiment, an organic chicken sandwich from Harbor Market in Sag Harbor almost immediately grew big splotches of blue mold, while a similar sandwich from McDonald’s barely showed any signs of decomposition.

Richard Burns, the district superintendent, and Isabel Madison, the assistant superintendent for finance, said yesterday that while plans were already in place to eventually change the chicken served in the school cafeterias, Tycho’s experiment “expedited” the change.

Whitsons, the school’s food service vendor, “very willingly came up with this solution,” Ms. Madison said.

At the East Hampton School Board meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Burns said the middle school principal, Charles Soriano, actually thanked Tycho “for a bit of student activism in a positive way because it brought some issues to the table.”

Tycho purchased a sandwich from McDonald’s on March 23 and the next day bought sandwiches from Harbor Market and the East Hampton Middle School cafeteria. He placed them under glass bowls and waited. On April 9, the Harbor Market sandwich was unrecognizable, while the McDonald’s sandwich looked unchanged, and the school sandwich began to show a slight sign of discoloration. By Monday, the school sandwich had developed a little more discoloration and some mold.

And on Monday afternoon’s school lunch plate, the new chicken fingers and chicken sandwiches appeared. Tycho said they looked much more appetizing.

“They looked a lot better. They didn’t look like compacted, pushed-together chicken,” he said, adding that he may, in fact, try them at some point, rather than avoiding all school food as he previously thought he would do.

The experiment was part of a follow-up assignment related to the reading of the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan in Meredith Hasemann’s English class. Tycho documented his project in photographs and a seven-page essay.

His reaction to the school’s chicken swap?

“I thought it was kind of funny,” he said.

Fifteen of the Ross Lower School’s littlest students raced around the school’s playground on Tuesday cradling potted seedlings in their small but capable hands. They were charged with an important task: Finding places to plant them among the gardens at the edges of the playground.

Last week, Bryan Smith, one of the school’s science teachers, helped students in the pre-kindergarten and nursery classes make the biodegradable pots using layers of recycled paper pulp, in which they planted various native flowers. By Tuesday, to the students’ delight, their seeds had sprouted, and right after they finished finding spots to plant them, the weather changed from cloudy to rainy. Just in time, Mr. Smith said, to nourish the sprouts.

The activity was meant to nourish the students’ understanding of the world around them, and it was part of the Ross School’s Earth Day celebration. Every grade took part in hands-on projects that were an extension of the students’ everyday curriculum. At the Ross Lower School, the students — even the youngest ones — spent Earth Day weeding in the gardens, making birdbaths, planting a pollinator garden, tending a milkweed garden to attract monarchs and other types of butterflies, and finding other ways to beautify the campus. 

“We really, truly feel that we need to create global citizens and foster global awareness, at a very young age; that starts locally,” said Junellen Tiska, the school’s co-director of curriculum and professional development. The activities were meant to emphasize to the students that “we are responsible for the care of our surroundings.”

The milkweed garden has what monarch butterflies need to thrive, and the pollinator garden includes plants such as honeysuckle, black-eyed Susans, daffodils, and purple coneflowers. Ms. Tiska said the birdbaths, which the students made out of clay pots using a pattern she found on the Internet, were a particularly fun project. Mr. Smith hopes the improved gardens will attract enough birds, bugs, and other creatures to the lower school campus that it may gain status as a National Wildlife Federation certified wildlife habitat.

The lower school students also worked on an organic snack garden. Once it bears fruit, Mr. Smith explained, it will be “a place where the kids can walk in and grab a sugar snap pea or pick another snack that they grew themselves.” It will feature crops such as strawberries, asparagus, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, and string beans.

“There’s always something going on in our natural space,” he said.

Jamie Laggis, one of the school’s early childhood teachers, said even at that level, the students are learning about sustainability. For example, she said, the students come to realize paper does not have to be thrown away. Even if they can’t draw on it anymore, they can recycle it for other purposes.

“We use the word ‘sustainability’ and explain that it means caring for the Earth, recycling, and not wasting anything,” Ms. Laggis said. “We ask them to come up with their own definitions of the word so that it would have more meaning for them.”

Mr. Smith said the children respond well to the types of lessons they learned on Earth Day.

“We have a goal, a purpose,” he said, “but they’re pretty naturally excited for it.”