And the winner is.....

Arctic Fox
Originally uploaded by alex ktz

The ARCTIC FOX!!! A great job was done by A.J., Megan, Brendan and Matthew who made displays, wrote blogs, and fought to choose the cutest pictures to capture the most votes! They all worked hard and picked terrific animals – arctic fox, lion, polar bear, and tiger. In the end, the arctic fox was chosen - likely because two breeds of arctic fox have only 230 adult animals combined. That’s what you call endangered!

The funds used to adopt the Arctic Fox from the World Wildlife Fund were raised as donations at our bag sale at Kroger last year. This means every dime was earned by the kids telling the story of Earth Watch and all that they hope to accomplish.

Many thanks to all of the adults at school who helped us collect the votes, especially in the media center. And, of course, thank you to the Green Committee, for encouraging the involvement of Earth Watch in the efforts to become a green school. All of us are excited to be a part of this.

Keep an eye out for a cute new arctic fox stuffed animal to join the school. We expect it to arrive soon.

Interested in buying one of the Earth Watch reusable bags or joining Earth Watch? Just let us know.

So, who won???

Have you been wondering which endangered animal won the adoption election? Well, so have we! We found out that our online poll did not work. What a bummer! So, we had to start over.

We want to thank Mrs. Swanson and Mrs. Clark for their help in the media center. They have been showing the classes our blogs and our displays and then taking the votes by hand. There are a few classes left and our team will be visiting those classes soon to get the final votes. We hope to tell you which animal won by Friday.

If you haven't voted in your classroom yet, check out the blog entries below and start figuring out which one you want to be our school's endangered animal.

More to come soon....

Vote for One of Us!

Arctic Fox

Arctic Fox
Originally uploaded by alex ktz

Lion



Polar Bear



Tiger

Vote for the Tiger!!

Hi, I'm Matt and I think you should vote the tiger for the school's adopted animal. Here's why.

You should vote for the tiger because it is one of the world's most endangerged animals. Tigers live in Southeast Asia. It's classified as endangered. Endangered means almost like the dinos. Almost gone. There are only 3,200 left in the wild. That's hardly any!

The tiger is endangered mostly because of habitat destruction. That would be like if someone came to your house and said "this is mine", and left you to find somewhere else to live.

That's why think you should vote the tiger. Thanks for reading.

From,
Matt (Earth Watch Founder)

The Awesome Polar Bear!

Hey, I'm Brendan and I strongly think that you should vote for the polar bear. The following reasons support my stand.

First of all, the polar bear's habitat is melting due to global warming, polar bears have fur coats to help them with the cold weather in the Arctic, but when it gets warm, their hunting ground (which is on ice) starts to melt and the polar bears get overheated, sad huh? When a polar bear gets overheated it usually dies. Another reason they die is due to oil and gas drilling because it harms their habitat. What's most sad of all is that most polar bears live in Northern Canada, but the Canadian government lets ANYONE hunt polar bears. :(

The reasons above show that we should adopt the polar bear. Thanks for reading my thoughts above. Please vote for polar bear!

Sincerely, Earth Watch Tech Dude ( Brendan)

It's Easy Being Green!

Did you know that some of the McGregor parents are working hard to get McGregor named a "green school"? This doesn't mean that the school has to be painted green, but that might be funny. It means that people in the school (grown-ups and kids) are working on making the school more "environmentally-friendly".

We were glad when the McGregor Green Committee asked Earth Watch to help. We promised to help with a few things.

1) Having a club for the environment. CHECK!
2) Helping out with Earth Day activities.
3) Adopting an endangered animal.

We have also helped with recycling and making compost for McGregor's new gardens.

You can help us, too. We want to know which endangered animal we should "adopt". We'll share info about our top 4 choices and ask for you to vote on these. Stay tuned for more info!