Our Lower Elementary classroom, a combined group of 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders, was lucky enough to receive the Silverfish globe. We began by brainstorming:

• plant a garden
• make a new playground
• put grass down for a new soccer field
• keep the sun from exploding
• reuse bottles for an art project
• stop smoking
• plant flowers for bees

Chicago has been under a deep freeze lately, so we ruled out planting things for now. What could we accomplish in the next week or so, given the weather? The students were very excited about stopping smoking. We settled on three things:

• pick up cigarette butts
• put up “No Smoking” signs
• write Governor Pritzker to sign the Tobacco 21 bill into law, which makes it illegal to smoke under the age of 21. Tobacco has nicotine, which is the stuff inside cigarettes that makes it bad for you. After you start you don’t want to stop.

We went on a walk down to Lake Michigan (only 3 blocks away) and picked up cigarettes. We picked up a surprising number of cigarette butts, plus one lighter. Estimates ranged from 30, 34, 50, 53, 58, 62, 63, 89, 115, 189, and 200. Usually when we do estimation work we count to see how close we got, but in this case I made the executive decision not to re-open the Ziplock bag and make an exact count.

I wore gloves to collect cigarettes the students pointed out on our walk.

We also created and designed No Smoking signs to post around our school, and we are in talks with our head of Communications as well as our Facilities Manager to post them.

We also Skyped with Joel Africk, the president and CEO of the Respiratory Health Association. He told us about the Tobacco 21 bill. And he answered a few of our questions, like “Can people die from smoking?” We also wrote and edited a letter to Gov. Pritzker.

Thanks so much for letting us be a part of this project.  Goodbye, Silverfish globe!

It was really cold at the lake, so we didn’t stay long!

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