BMS Students Help Create a Unique Fourth of July Float

Albert Mohr put a few more flowers into the moss and netting covering a red and white pick up truck transformed into a Fourth of July float.

“The whole thing turned out well,” said Daya Welty, a student from Lake Barrington Shores, standing near Mohr and holding a birdhouse that needed to be added to the float.

Mohr and Welty are part of Barrington Middle School teacher Michelle Dituri’s service learning summer class. The class offers students an opportunity to volunteer for local agencies while learning how to organize efforts and leadership.

Part of that volunteer effort included helping the Barrington Area Conservation Trust create a float for next week’s Fourth of July parade in Barrington, Dituri said.

This week, the class spent two days decorating a float for the Barrington Area Conservation Trust is one of the participants in Barrington’s Fourth of July parade scheduled at 10 a.m. Thursday, July 4. It will start at Barrington High School and continue on Main Street to the train station.

Dituri’s class recreated the trust’s logo the back of the pickup truck, down to a butterfly on a birdhouse. Each child signed his or her name on one prop.

It took a few days for the class to get the float ready, from cutting oak tree leaves out of construction paper to using hot guns to glue moss onto the display. The class put the finishing touches on the float Thursday morning.

Mohr found adding the moss was time consuming but looked good. The float “took a lot of hard work,” he said.

“They did an awesome job,” said Lisa Woolford, as she took pictures of the class standing in front of the finished product. Woolford is with the trust.

Barrington Area Conservation Trust will be handing out fliers that can be used to get a free oak tree in the fall. Woolford said the trust is working to plan more oak trees as many in the Barrington area are in danger of dying out in the next 15 years, she said.

“Our mission to help people do good things with conservation on their land,” Woolford said.

Building the float raised Rabi Decatorsmith’s awareness about conservation.

“I learned to conserve our resources because we are running out of them. We have to work as a team to achieve our goals,” the BMS student said.

The class includes Zach Green, Capri Biangardi, Ella Yarbrough, Nikki Ali, Blake Schorsch, Decatorsmith, Welty and Morh.

Students have spent their summer volunteering at different places including Barrington Community School District 220’s Early Learning Center, Walk on Farm which offers a therapeutic riding sessions.

One project had the class doing a cooking demo at Greencastle of Barrington then serving residents, she said. Students had to plan the demo and figure out what they needed. Students are also doing a bake sale and car wash, learning the planning behind volunteer efforts, she said.

“We get to see them being active in the community,” Dituri said.