Often taking place the last week of October, Red Ribbon week is a week long campaign that recognizes and promotes drug-free living, mainly to youth and teens. There are great resources available to parents and teachers to promote this week, here are some of those links and resources:
- National Family Partnership's Lock Your Meds official campaign about keeping prescription drugs out of the hands of youth. Find resources for that campaign here.
- Here is a list of Red Ribbon Activities including themed days like Decoration Day, Information Day, Faith Day
Wear Red Rally Day, Pledge Day, and Recognition Day.
- Red Ribbon Coalition, which also has a brief history to the Red Ribbon Campaign
- Red Ribbon printable worksheets
- I still have my t-shirt from the D.A.R.E. program...
- Get additional information from drugfree.org
- And there's the hip, modern, and interactive site (for the cool kids, but essentially quite informative): Above The Influence (the opening page takes a while to open) or ski on over to the Above The Influence main page.Have contests:
- Language Arts: Poetry, Short Story, Write a script, write lyrics, create a book jacket for a book you're reading in class: how would one of the characters promote Red-Ribbon week?, rewrite the lyrics to a popular song
- Arts: Create a poster promoting healthy and drug-free living, perform a skit, perform a song (hip-hop, country, rock and roll, etc.), collaborate on a school mural (of course, this would take LOTS of planning), paint panels to display at school (maybe give each grade or class a canvas they can paint) or take the transcripts from the Above The Influence Ads and re-enact them.
- Physical Education or Recess: Have a free choice activity promoting that all can have fun without drugs, play with other other classes or grades and have an annual competition, obstacle courses, a drug-free run of who can run/skip/hop/jump the most
- History: Create an American History timeline about programs, laws, and people who promotes drug-free changes. Timetoast is a great interactive timeline maker.
- Math: Have students guess the measurement of a red ribbon
I'm stuck on more ideas, but when I get there, I'll post them.
