Fitzgerald’s Foods Partners with Simsbury Kindergartners to Promote Earth Day

Each year Simsbury Public Schools kindergarten classes team up with Fitzgerald’s Foods, on Hopmeadow Street in Simsbury, to raise awareness about Earth Day on April 22nd. Earth Day was first established in 1970 in San Francisco, California, to celebrate the Earth and heighten awareness about the environment.

Each year Fitzgerald’s donates stacks of paper grocery bags for children to decorate. Simsbury’s kindergarten classes have participated in this event since 2008, when Andrea Pranaitis’ Central School class first began the tradition. The images and accompanying words, not always spelled perfectly but expressed with a kindergartner’s enthusiasm, reflect the Earth Day themes that the students discuss in class before the projects. During the week of Earth Day, the bags are returned to the store, and Fitzgerald’s bags shoppers’ groceries with these visual reminders to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Popular themes in Joanna Lukowicz’s class at Central School were “don’t litter,” “don’t waste water,” “save the earth,” and “pick up trash!” Probably the biggest thrill for the children was finding out that they were going to use markers. When their teacher announced this development, since markers show up better on grocery bags than crayons, there were audible ooh’s and ah’s of delight.

At the Squadron Line School cafeteria, “book buddies”—kindergarteners from Michelle Fabiano’s class and fifth graders from Debra Lotstein’s class—collaborated on their Earth Day themed grocery bag designs. While waiting for the kindergarten class to arrive, Lotstein reminded her fifth graders of the importance of their role as mentors to their younger counterparts. “When the kindergartners get here,” said Lotstein, “they’re not going to know as much as you!”

Some of the kindergartners arrived with definite notions of their own. “I love animals!” exclaimed one girl, thus her partner obliged, with drawings of butterflies and other creatures.

As the bags were being collected for delivery to Fitzgerald’s, at least one kindergartner was confident that her little project might make a difference. She proudly declared, “Someone will like ours because it’s beautiful!”

For more information about Earth Day, visit the Earth Day Network’s website at www.earthday.org/earthday