Helping Ninjas Help garden and compost 2018

Helping Ninjas and College Wood Elementary Green Team

The Helping Ninjas and the College Wood Elementary School student Green Team groups wanted to learn and teach about local organic gardening and composting. The students worked with the school cafeteria manager to start composting cafeteria scraps, they started a school worm composting bin, and they taught other students how to compost. Students planted vegetable plants in a community plot at the CCS Plots to Plates Community Gardens and donated the food to their school cafeteria and Second Helpings. They also educated their classmates on ways to go green using new bulletin boards.

The Helping Ninjas started the composting part of their project with a healthy snack. They learned which parts of the waste from the snacks were the compostable. They also learned how they could limit and compost waste from every meal they ate. To learn how and what to compost, visit the EPA website here.

Helping Ninjas also demonstrated how to compost at home with the green team students. The Helping Ninjas donated the supplies for the project as well as the mason jars for students to take home. All participating students were urged to experiment with composting over the summer by using the provided jars.

In addition to learning and teaching how to compost, the students learned how to grow their own organic food at the CCS Plots to Plates Organic Community Gardens. Students and their families started by preparing the garden plots.

The Helping Ninjas were so very excited to start harvest the food from the plants they started and cultivated all summer long. Learning about the importance of pollinators, healthy soil, organic fertilizers, composting, water conservation, recycling,  protecting nature, and caring for others is what being a Helping Ninja is all about.

The Helping Ninjas visited the student Green Team at Prairie Trace Elementary School and helped teach other students about composting. They provided mini-composting jars to each student. The Helping Ninjas also provided this program along for over 120 students at the ESC after school program at College Wood Elementary school.

In addition to teaching about hands-on composting through the use of their jars, the Helping Ninjas also collected school cafeteria scraps for use in their school compost bin. Students worked with Castaway Compost in Noblesville to learn about and obtain a worm composting bin, which traveled from home to home with the student Ninjas. Composting using worms is called vermicomposting, and it is fast and easy to learn.

Students and their families worked hard all summer long to plant, pull weeds, and water their garden plots. They were also able to use some of their compost they made from cafeteria waste on their garden plots!

Eating nutritious, fresh foods that are plant based is important. Learning about foods and their super powers shows us that science is cool.

In addition to delivering baskets of fresh, local, organic produce to the their school's cafeteria for the students to enjoy, the Helping Ninjas also offered baskets of food to school administrators. Even more food was donated to Second Helpings, a local non-profit which provides meals to those in need. Well done, Ninjas!

To finish off their Carmel Green Teen project, the Helping NInjas installed two new bulletin boards in their school. Students will use the boards to teach about reducing, reusing, recycling, and so many other ways that students, no matter how young, can work together to help our planet. To learn more about the Helping Ninjas, visit their website here.