Outside of a few campaigns during my adolescent and teenage years when I refused to let McDonalds serve my hamburger in a styrofoam container or my personal ban on tuna, I haven't been very environment focused.  If the movie Happy Feet didn't change that for me, I'm not sure what could. 

Granted, the boys are refining their ability to recognize foods with chemicals by sight (Braden schooled Trace on the menu of chemicals at Sonic), but I haven't explained "saving the environment" very well yet.  But, there was a contest at school which we find pretty motivating so it was a good place to start.  We enter everything.

I'll admit that Kindergartners need guidance planning their contest submissions.  They aren't great with the concept of "concepts" quite yet.  I have to resist my urge to take over and make it "fabulous".  We do our best to probe and extract it from Marshall's head... typically the simplicity of what he says is perfect.

A couple of months ago there was an environmental awareness contest with the theme "What Can I Do".  The entry form was two sided.  One side had the directions and the other had the entry form.  We extracted, we probed but Marshall's environmental consciousness had not yet been programmed.  The only thing he knew anything about was recycling paper... and that's only because we use it as an excuse to convince them to draw on the paper that the printer spews out during its jibberish spasms.  So, that's what he did with the application.  He simply wrote "I can re-use paper" and drew all over it.  It was a winner!.

According to Marshall the announcement was made over the loud speaker at school and he was told that he won.  His teacher gave him the trophy and his classmates thought he was a rockstar.  Unfortunately all I have to go by is what Marshall told me because I guess they are trying to save paper and no note came home.

If I ever get his entry back I'll scan in his masterpiece!