photos by TANIAH TUDOR
Ally Smith, a volunteer from Van Buren High School, paints the face of Aryn Silva, 6, a first-grade student at King Elementary in Van Buren for the school’s Earth Day celebration April 22.
Teacher Lacey Thomas hands out pamphlets with games and information about bees to her first-grade class as they listen to T.C. Long, a member of the Western Arkansas-Eastern Oklahoma Beekeepers Association, talk on the important role bees play in food production.
Ryan Pearson, a volunteer from Van Buren High School, encourages Zoe Yandell, 6, as she pitches a plastic container into a recycling bin as part of a basket shooting game for Earth Day at King Elementary.
First-grade students raise their hands to ask Paul VanLare with GrowFresh Organics in Fort Smith questions about soil, rocks and all other basic principles of growing plants.
Volunteers Adan Flores (left) and Dalton Clark, both seniors at Van Buren High School, lower the bar as kindergarteners play Tree Limb Limbo at King Elementary.
Abigail Cervantes, 6, takes a free pine tree from Ron Hestir, director of telecommunications and sustainability for Nabholtz Construction, who hands out the trees with Travis Bartlett of MAGH Architecture Firm under a pergola their two companies helped make possible.
Joe Hamilton, a park interpreter at Lake Fort Smith State Park, plays the banjo and sings a song about clean water.