Students share message of peace with pinwheels

Kirsten Snodgrass believes it's never too early to start teaching kids about peace.

Earlier this week, the West Chicago art teacher led a celebration of Pinwheels for Peace - an initiative that encourages young people to express their feelings about peace on handmade pinwheels - at Indian Knoll Elementary School.

The idea, she said, was started by two Florida art teachers in 2005. In the first year, 500,000 pinwheels were created. Last year, the number grew to 4.5 million worldwide. Students create pinwheels of different shapes and sizes, often writing messages on one side about what peace means to them and drawing or painting a picture on the other side that represents their meaning of peace.

Snodgrass' kindergarten through fifth-grade students gathered outside the West Chicago Elementary District 33 school Monday to stick their pinwheels in the ground around the school's flagpole and a garden. During the gathering - which always takes place the same week as International Peace Day - the students sang the national anthem and songs about peace they learned from music teacher Robyn Kimmel.

Snodgrass said the students worked on their pinwheels for several weeks, using markers, colored pencils and crayons to decorate the creations, which started as white pieces of paper.

"We talked about symbols for peace that they recognize: peace signs, doves," she said.

Snodgrass said the students also learned about installation art and how "individually we make our own statement," but when artwork is put together in mass quantities, it makes an even bigger statement and takes on new meaning.

Snodgrass estimates she has been leading her students in the activity for about nine years. She worries whether the students get bored with it, but every year she is pleased to see "the magic of making (the pinwheel) work and seeing it actually spin."

"I think they look forward to it," she said. "It's just getting them to think about alternatives (to violence) and how we can each do our own little part to be more peaceful."