LAGUNA NIGUEL : Earth Summit Offers World of Environmental Knowledge

Don’t leave the refrigerator door open while you decide what to eat. Don’t leave the television on all day. And don’t use aerosol spray cans, because they diminish the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

Those words of wisdom came from a group of fourth- and fifth-graders at John Malcom Elementary School as they presented their school’s first Earth Summit.

Over the past several months, Cheryl Barnes’ students have visited libraries and college science labs, watched complicated environmental videos and conducted air-pollution experiments. Then they turned to exhorting other students to do what they can to help keep the planet clean.

With the use of bright educational displays on acid rain, smog, the greenhouse effect and ozone-layer depletion, and an engaging skit about human cruelty to “Mother Earth,” the students shared environmental facts with other Malcom students on Thursday and with visiting Capistrano Unified School District officials.

“Before, I didn’t even know what acid rain was,” said fifth-grade participant Taylore McClurg, who can now rattle off the drastic effects of acid rain--including dead rivers, lakes and animals, and eroded buildings. “I liked putting on the play and how we could educate others about how to clean up the environment and save our Mother Earth.”

“They have gotten so into the project,” said parent coordinator Susan Wystrach, whose son, Carter, played the role of a greedy polluter in the skit, “2001: An Air Pollution Odyssey.”

“My son comes home now and says, ‘Don’t throw that away, Mom,’ ” Wystrach said.

The students presented results from experiments, such as one in which they put white socks on the tailpipes of the school districts’ buses to check for pollution, and quizzed visitors on their knowledge of how the burning of fossil fuels depletes the ozone layer and how “greenhouse” gases cause the Earth’s temperature to rise.

The school, whose theme is environmental science, has entered the Earth Summit project in the statewide Jiminy Cricket Environmentality Challenge Contest, which is co-sponsored by the California Environmental Educational Interagency Network and the Walt Disney Co.