Arbor Day Foundation Announces End to Annual Poster Contest

Arbor Day Foundation Announces End to Annual Poster Contest

After almost 20 years, the Arbor Day Foundation has announced the end to its annual poster contest. The contest, created to enhance nature-based education for fifth-grade students nationwide, asked students to create a poster based on a tree-inspired theme presented in the Arbor Day Foundation curriculum each year. Each state was permitted to submit one poster to the national contest, and one winner was chosen nationwide.

A listing of past New Hampshire state winners and their posters can be found on the UNH Cooperative Extension website http://extension.unh.edu/Forestry/arbor.htm.

The poster contest and associated curriculum started in 18 states with 4,300 fifth grade students. At the peak of its popularity, the contest involved over 75,000 fifth grade classrooms and 1.5 million students.

The Arbor Day Foundation, whose mission is to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees, is changing its youth education focus to its new Nature Explore program, created in partnership with Dimensions. Dimensions is a new, specially designed and free online resource which will be available in October 2010.

Educators who wish to continue to use the poster contest curriculum in their schools may request a copy from the New Hampshire state coordinator, Kristina Ferrare at UNH Cooperative Extension. She may be reached at (603) 862-3883 or kristina.ferrare@unh.edu.

For more information on the Arbor Day Foundation, visit www.arborday.org.