Do Something: Slytherin Family Water Competition

Hey Hippogriffs!

I've been checking out this website called Do Something. It's all about helping young people do things to make the world a better place. Sound familiar? Only they also have actions you can do that can actually win you prizes like laptops and college scholarships, how cool is that??  So I signed us up as a Do Something team and I'll be inviting you all to join the team soon - so keep a lookout for an email asking you to join. It's not spam, it's from me, really!

Browsing through the many great ideas they have listed, I noticed this one that we can do right now as Slytherins in our own homes, at this link and listed below.  Anyone want to try it? Let us know how it goes!

Also, looks like great minds think alike - they have one on marking storm drains. Theirs is about creating your own signs to mark them - I guess some areas don't have the official stickers that ours does. Speaking of which.... anyone else find some storm drains in your neighborhood? Let me know how many and I can order our stickers!!!

Thanks!

~Lynne

Slytherin Family Water Competition:

A typical American will use over 100 gallons of water per day. Host a contest that challenges each member of your family to reduce his or her water consumption.

1. Have each person write down everything that he or she uses water for in daily life.
2. Look up and assign water amounts to each activity on each person's list. For instance:
   • showering—4 gallons per minute
   • bathing in a full tub—36 gallons
   • flushing the toilet—4 gallons per flush
   • washing hands—4 gallons per minute
   • brushing teeth—4 gallons per minute
   • doing laundry—43 gallons per load
3. Now challenge everyone to see who can use the least water in one day. Assign a special prize or recognition to people who keep it below 8 gallons.

• Allow people to have unlimited amounts of drinking water (you don't wanna send people to the hospital).

When people report back, discuss what everyone learned. Ask questions like

• What was the hardest part of life without water?
• How long you think you could live with just 8 gallons of water each day?
• Who did you tell about the challenges of going without water when you were doing it? Did they know that people abroad deal with this problem every day?

Source: Southwest Florida Water Management District

Potions Homework!

Hey Hippos, Professor Snape has some homework for you! You know how cranky he gets, don't disappoint him! Send back your report as soon as possible please!

You have two assignments:

1. The first is an answer to this question: would you be able to attend Hippogriffs meetings if it were the 1st or 3rd (or both?) Sundays of the month instead of the 2nd? I'm told that Youth Group and other meetings conflict with ours, and I think we might get more folks joining us if we changed it. What do you think?

2. The second will require you to drive or walk around your neighborhood with your parent or trusted adult. Your job is to count as many storm drains as you can in your neighborhood. Look on the corners of intersections - these are the holes, usually with metal tops over them, that lead down to pipes which eventually lead to the rivers where our Slytherin water friends live. A lot of intersections have one on each corner - count them all. And report back how many you counted and where you went - the neighborhood (like "Clintonville" for instance) as well as the actual streets (such as "between E. Weisheimer and E Royal Forest, and High and Olentangy.")

Today in our meeting we talked about participating in the Storm Drain Marker Program (more info here: http://utilities.columbus.gov/content.aspx?id=38176) for which we'll be placing "No Dumping" decals on the storm drains to help with the Public Utilities folks' public awareness efforts to inform people of the direct connection between these pipes and the rivers to hopefully keep them from polluting them. However we found it hard to figure out how many of these decals we'll need by looking at maps, so we decided that the best way to do this would be to get out and actually look at the streets in our neighborhoods in person. 

So as you go around your area, keep in mind that whatever you report will be how many decals we'll order - so only count storm drains for as many streets as you think you can reasonably handle. Lucia and I did this in our Westerville neighborhood and counted 50 storm drains in just a 4 or 5 street area, so even a small section of your neighborhood can be a lot!

Also, the sooner you give me that information, the sooner I can order them, which means the sooner they'll get them back to us. We don't want to be doing this in December, right? So get 'em back right away so we can do this while the weather is still nice! End of the week, perhaps?

Thanks everyone!
~Lynne

Meeting this Sunday, Sept 9

Hey Enlightened Hippogriffs!

We're going to have a meeting this Sunday, Sept 9 at 1 pm, Room 7. Be there!

For our last month of Slytherin, I'm planning on the following:

• Another round of Pensieve thoughts and memories 
• A celebration of our one year anniversary as a group! Can you believe it's been a year already? Go us! We'll talk a little about what we've accomplished already and review our plans for the year ahead. I may even bring a treat, who knows?
• Preparation for volunteering in the Storm Drain Marker Program that we discussed briefly last time. In case you missed our last meeting, this program relies on volunteers to walk around their neighborhoods putting decals on storm drains that lead to rivers, reminding them not to dump in them. Before we can do this though, we'll need to take a close look at some area maps and figure out how many we're going to do. It'll be like writing our own Marauders' Map! 

See you Sunday!

~Lynne