“We Hate Pollution!”

“We Hate Pollution!”

by Sarah Felstiner, Curriculum Director, Hilltop Children’s Center

In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to share this letter written 15 years ago by students in the Sunlight Room at Hilltop Children’s Center. They were engaged in an in-depth investigation about pollution, which began with some spontaneous play and conversation in the block area, and ended up lasting several months.

This letter was just one of the many initiatives that children took up…along with tree-planting, recycling, visiting a nearby kite factory to inquire about their environmental impact, and making the poster above. Please circulate this letter widely, per the children’s instructions…

Thanks, and Happy Earth Day!

[box] Dear cousins and moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandpas and grandmas and friends and friends of your cousins,

We hate pollution.

There’s pollution in the water, there’s pollution in the sky, and there’s pollution under the ground. Pollution comes from factories and buildings and cars and motors and motorcycles and chimneys and smoking.

Stop it. You should plant trees and flowers and fruit bushes. You should stop the factories. You should ride bikes, or walk, or go on roller skates or rollerblades. You should do recycling.

Give this or mail this to somebody when you’re done reading this. Take your time having it, and make sure you send it someday soon. Send it to another people, and then they read it, and then they give it to another person, and they give it around to the whole wide city, and Africa.

Pass it into the whole wide world. Pass it until it comes in the whole wide world, until the oldest, oldest people read it. It would be wonderful if everybody was clear, and no factories, and just a plain old world with no pollution, please.

love, Siri, Kaiser, Alex, Jack, and all the kids in Sunlight Room [/box]

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://hilltopcc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Sarah-Felstiner-photo-square.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Sarah Felstiner is the Curriculum Director at Hilltop Children’s Center, where she has worked since 1995.[/author_info] [/author]