Students Get Lessons on the Environment : Earth Day: A host of school-sponsored activities across the county mark the annual celebration.

Educators and environmentalists celebrated Earth Day on Friday, working with those they hope will one day save the planet: the children.

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Students at Fred Williams School in south Oxnard dramatized their pro-environment message with a cast of cardboard sea animals. Colorful creatures such as Sam the Clam and Clark the Shark taught other elementary schoolchildren not to leave trash at the beach where it could harm marine life.

“We have to save the earth,” said 10-year-old Eileen Torres as she took her position behind the light projector for a 20-minute class production.

Students at Elmhurst School in nearby Ventura spent the morning sorting through sacks of trash that they generated at school in one week. The elementary school has no recycling program for disposable dishes used in the cafeteria. But Jessie McLeod’s third-grade students are working on a plan to take their classroom recycling program schoolwide.

“We need to recycle so we don’t turn our earth into a trash pile,” said Jesse White, 8.

At Madrona School in Thousand Oaks, elementary students assembled bird feeders from used half-gallon milk cartons and planted an embankment with sunflower seeds that are expected to grow waist-high by fall.

Seven-year-old Alex Berlin studied the two holes punched on both sides of his milk carton, and pushed a twig through to create a perch for the birds.

The feeder, Alex said, would “keep the birds healthy and feed them so they don’t, like, starve.”

These were just a few of the many school-sponsored activities across Ventura County that marked Earth Day, the annual celebration that began in 1970 to increase awareness of the environment.

Ventura County cities and the county have planned more activities for today, including a special children’s booth at the Conejo Valley Days in Thousand Oaks.

“We try to integrate this environmental ethic into the kids when they’re young,” said Becky Radonich, recycling coordinator for the city of Camarillo. Radonich, who visited Los Nogales School on Friday, said, “Kids are an extremely effective method of bringing the values home to parents.”

And children remember the lessons best when they learn them through the kinds of hands-on events that occur on Earth Day, said Carol Boysen, who teaches a fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade bilingual class at Fred Williams School.

“It’s important that kids think about what they can do to take a personal part in preserving the ocean and the environment,” Boysen said.

The students researched sea animals and then helped create the large cardboard characters that danced across the stage Friday during a presentation of the play “Sam the Clam.”

When the play opens, Sam is a happy clam at the bottom of the ocean, listening to all his friends above him chattering and swimming. But as pollution worsens, Gail the Whale, Sheryl the Shrimp, Tommy Turtle and Carol the Crab begin to disappear, making Sam very sad.

When children clean the beach, Sam is happy again and his friends return.

“We learned a lot about things and how we have to take care of beaches and pick up trash and not kill fishes and save the coral reef,” said Cesar Lopez, 10.

At Fred Williams School, students in MacLeod’s class got a refresher course on the importance of recycling by Marcy Sanchez of Gold Coast Recycling.

The students, who had been on a tour of the recycling facility earlier this month, discussed how they might recycle even more than they did this past week.

They decided to take old T-shirts and refashion them as reusable shopping bags for Mother’s Day presents.

“One of the students, Blake Smith, came up with the idea, so we all got all excited about it,” MacLeod said.

During lunch and recess at Madrona School in Thousand Oaks, students swarmed around a picnic table piled with milk cartons, twigs saved from yard clippings, small bags full of birdseed and paper clips.

First-grader Jann Nielsen said she thought her bird feeder would attract blue jays and robins.

“I’m going to put a list of names of girls and a list of names of boys on the feeder,” she said. “I’m going to name all the birds that come and eat at my feeder.”

Kat Seiple, a mother who helped organize the project, said the project was chosen in part to teach children that birds help the environment by spreading seeds and by eating insects, reducing the need for pesticides.

“We don’t expect one day to make a difference for the earth, but we’d like this to be a spring for the kids,” she said. “It helps them see that all these things aren’t garbage.”

Miller is a Times staff writer and Fields is a correspondent.

Today’s Earth Day Activities

* Oxnard College’s festival, with environmental-themed art and booths from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The festival will have ethnic dancing and short lectures, 4000 S. Rose Ave. For information, call 986-5847.

* Channel Islands National Park’s fund-raiser march, beginning at 8 a.m. People can walk, bike or jog to raise money for a native plant garden at the national park’s visitors center at Ventura Harbor. For information, call 658-5740.

* Blanche Reynolds School’s Open Classroom program holds a festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with games, prizes and entertainment to raise money for new playground equipment for the elementary school, 450 Valmore Ave., Ventura. For information, call 649-9847.

* The National Forest Service wants volunteers to help clear Middle Sespe Trail, which connects Lions Camp with Beaver Camp, and is used by bikers and hikers. Volunteers should meet at the Ojai ranger station at 1190 E. Ojai Ave. at 8 a.m. with gloves, tools, lunch and water. For information, call 646-4348.