Salt Creek Students Buddy Up with Local Animal Shelter
Approximately 3.2 million shelter animals are adopted every year in the United States alone.* Animal shelters all over the country are hard at work reducing the number of animals who are unnecessarily euthanized, helping place animals in loving homes, and creating a happier life for both humans and their adopted canine companions and feline friends.
Many of these shelters rely heavily on volunteers and donations to help keep their good works in motion.
Thanks to the efforts of Salt Creek teacher Kara Safina, her 2nd grade classroom, and innovative learning coach Amanda Hager, a local animal shelter, the Buddy Foundation, received a great donation for their animal friends: one hundred and eleven pet beds for dogs and cats.
The pet beds were made possible by a group effort of Safina’s students, who decided to set up a lemonade stand in their classroom and use the proceeds to help a local charity. The project involved multiple ‘committees’ that helped plan the lemonade sale, determine the Buddy Foundation was the charity the children wanted to assist, and research the most cost-efficient location to purchase pet beds. Students decided that selling lemonade would be a great way to raise funds because “everyone gets thirsty,” it would be low cost with high profit margins, and a convenient way to get onsite sales.
During the planning stages, students had a special guest who also happens to be an alum of Salt Creek: a local lemonade stand ‘expert’ came in to share her knowledge. Sixth grade Grove Junior High student Alizabeth (“Izzy”) Ruiz, who has a neighborhood lemonade stand every year to help local charities, paid the second graders a visit. She spoke about her planning and preparation methods, how she selects her charity, and even created a specially decorated donations box for the students to use to collect their money.
The entire idea for the lemonade stand began with the students’ math unit. The price of lemonade, 68 cents, was set so students would have to practice counting various increments of coins and money. They also brainstormed together on how to best create marketing materials both on and off site and how to choose their charity, practiced their online skills to perform research, and showed off their creativity in preparing signs, flyers, posters, and even handmade raffle tickets for their product in the PBIS raffle.
On March 22 and 23, students raised most of the money during the lemonade sale to students and staff members but also collected donations from families who sent money in.
While Safina credits her students with the work and said, “We were just their guides on the side,” she certainly did her share by making lemonade-mix runs to the local grocery store, helping facilitate the students’ planning, and stuffing her car full of the 111 pet beds she was able to purchase with the $557 the students raised.
As teams of students were using their math and collaboration skills to count pet beds, ensuring they had the correct number, CCSD59 Board Member Karen Osmanski stopped in for a visit. She shared with the students that she stopped in after checking in on a new canine addition to her own family – her son’s new 8 week old black labrador puppy. She happily showed students cell phone pics of the puppy and explained to them how important it is for him to have a bed.
“Congratulations, boy and girls, I’m very proud of the work you did,” she said to the class, “and next time, I’m going to ask you where to go, before I buy another dog bed!”
