Save the Pandas!

My oldest son came home from school a few weeks ago saying that he and his friends had talked at school and had collectively decided that they wanted to do a project to save the endangered pandas in Asia.

Pandas have become endangered is habitat destruction. As the population in China continues to grow, pandas’ habitat gets taken over by development, pushing them into smaller and less livable areas.

Daniel did some research and found that through the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) they could adopt a panda for $25.

This seemed like a realistic goal.

One day after school, the kids all gathered at our house for a meeting.

Out came the flip chart paper.

The kids recorded all their ideas of what they could do to raise money.
Votes were taken and a bar graph was made.

The final decision was a bake sale.

The kids talked about how they could take their money from their allowance, but they decided it would be better to raise the money rather than donate their own.

After the meeting, the kids made posters for the bake sale.

They ended the afternoon with some panda cupcakes I had made for them while they were at school.

The day of the bake sale finally arrived.

The kids arrived at our house with all of their baked goods in tow. Some had made up price tags, and others had dressed really nicely – people like to buy from cute kids!

They loaded the wagon, a basket and some trays and headed around our neighbourhood.

Previous to this, I had emailed our immediate neighbours to let them know that the kids would be coming around, so they wouldn’t be surprised and knew it was legitimate.

Most of the items the kids had made themselves. They priced everything at either 25cents or 50cents, making it easy to shop from their travelling bake sale!

I walked around with them, but hung at the back. At first they weren’t sure they wanted me to be there, but were glad in the end I was – if nothing else to pull the wagon when they were tired!

With a clipboard in hand of all the neighbours they wanted to hit, they made their rounds.

And, the neighbours seemed to love it.

What can I get for $5? An awful lot when things are priced at 25cents!
Where are you going to keep the panda when you adopt him?
Why don’t you adopt an alligator instead?
Why do you want to adopt a panda?

The kids could answer just as quickly as the questions came.

The kids did such a great job and surpassed their goal of $25, ending up with over $75 – enough to adopt 3 pandas!

They learned so much through the process: how to work on a project together, baking skills, event management, math skills (they added up all the price tags!), social skills, team building, social justice, and so much more!

As one of the moms said, they followed through from start to finish. They had a goal and were rewarded for their hard work by being able to adopt more than one panda.

We were so proud of these 7 to 10 year olds. They did the panda project all on their own!
Who knows what they will do next. Because they can!